


They Saved Sozin's Head

by Abraxas (Qlippoth)



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:40:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22398724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qlippoth/pseuds/Abraxas
Summary: Zei uncovers a mystery that indicates Nazis are alive and well. June knows a little about the Nazis and their attempt to sabotage the world. Working together they struggle to foil the Nazis plot - is it too late? - just what is their plot?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as part of a gift-fic exchange at LiveJournal - and it was so many eons ago that I don't recall to whom it was for! The only information I remember about the request was that they wanted a pulpy, 1930's style adventure in the style of Indiana Jones with June as Jones and they wanted her paired (unromantically) with Prof Zei.
> 
> In keeping with the style of that request I made the bad guys Nazis; I also shoehorned into the plot a lot of zany Ancient Aliens type conspiracy theories; I know I know but there has to be a McGuffen.
> 
> I made certain assumptions about the world/setting of Avatar which are totally not canonical - namely - that it takes place in a distant, post-apocalyptic reality. It was never a popular plot device, so far as I remember, it only made sense to use it anyway. So I'm tagging it with AU/AR - Canon Divergence.
> 
> One final note - years ago Jun was considered an acceptable variation of the character's name, however, I changed it to June. Do let me know if you happen to find an errant Jun.

Originally Published April 1, 2011

* * *

Volcania loomed, isolated, at the middle of the ocean. Its peak was jagged with slabs like fingers jetting into the sky. Its slope was a perfect if steep grade symmetric from side to side. Its facade sported only tiny smatters of flaws: segments of fissures - deep and wide - carved into its bulk like a spiral.

An explorer could have scaled the volcano without difficulty yet that was not the aim of Zei and his party.

It was daybreak when their boat approached the island. As they neared its edge, a blanket of white sunk onto the peak of the volcano. Soon that cloud was aglow - an effect not unlike the splendor of an aurora except it wore a dusty shade of red. Suddenly a wave of smoke bellowed out of the peak and it got swept away by the wind down, across the bulk of the mountain into the forest. And then, with a roar that swayed the vessel and knocked the party off of its feet, the island slumbered....

A canoe slipped onto the water. Turuk, a man of the Northern Water Tribe, climbed aboard. Fen and Xi watched Zei toss a sack at the waterbender then wave goodbye as the figure retreated.

Xi continued to steer the boat right into a cove. The rest of the crew - Fen, Li and Chuan - got off of the vessel and through a wall of wave dragged the anchor ashore. They saw how the perimeter of the island was littered with relics of eruptions. They secured the anchor with the largest and nearest of those long-ago ejected rocks.

"We need to remove that sail," Zei explained, pointing at the object.

Xi nodded and gave the word to the crew. They set to work removing and stowing the neutral color sail. They unfurled a banner at the stern - a vague, fiery emblem like the kind a Fire Nation national used. With any luck that would be enough to fool the navy. 

It was a ploy, to be certain, which may or may not have been overplayed by smugglers - Zei could not say as it was his very first trip into that (hostile) region of the world. It was a guess surmised through a year's investigation regarding how to blend with Fire Nation society. Everything was selected to avoid attention. A fisherman's boat - that tended to be generic, more functional than national. A yellow, faded sail - that indicated years of use, abuse at sea. Even the crew, hired at the Earth Kingdom coast, was meant to pass as a Fire Nation crew - and could have been so descended, as Koji feared.... 

They deviated only when they met a Water Tribe navigator familiar with that area.

Koji, the student, turned to Zei, the professor.

"I know field trips are dangerous and I know it's far, far too late to be worried about safety - now that we're at the doorstep of the Fire Nation," he prefaced, looking down, across and fidgeting as if defending a thesis and not stating the obvious. He gazed aback, cautiously, as the crew, headed by Fen and Xi, transported supplies from the deck to the shore.

"Fen and Xi, what a pair!" he interjected with his erudite if naive tone. "One all body. One all mind. Together they make a complete man."

"Yes.... What I'm worried about.... Though.... Well, after what happened with the sandbenders, I get the feeling you don't always hire ... honest ... people that could be trusted. I fear your willingness to comb through taverns and such will be your undoing. In the Earth Kingdom, I guess, it didn't matter that much. In the Fire Nation, though, it's way, way too reckless."

The professor clasped Koji at the shoulders. The student noted a glow - a twinkle of a kind - at Zei's eye that matched the fire of the volcano. It bespoke of an all-consuming and blinding passion - and he understood what it meant. The archeologist was at the verge of discovery - he smelt it wafting through that dawn's warm, tropical air - he saw it reflected about that island's vibrant green jungle....

"Relax, Koji, everything is OK." Zei paused and whispered - without looking like he whispered. "The crew, no doubt, is as eager to leave as you and I. We will not be harmed - at least ... until the haggling for more and more pay starts ... later. Remember, it's not just the risky nature of archeology within a world that does not value its history. Worse, still, it's the way the art is corrupted by the Fire Nation as graverobbery. What we do is not always ... above reproach ... to people. The crew reflects that." He stopped yet it was not either word or gesture only the roar of the volcano that punctuated his sentence. Animals scattered about the forest. The boat rattled and everything that was not bolted was tossed. "And that is why we're safe - with that volcano ready to burst - the Fire Nation will not dare come ashore," he added. 

The Fire Nation was an archipelago whose islands were too vast to count. Its larger, central islands were deemed important. Its swaths of tiny, outer islands - like Volcania - were notoriously erratic and uninhabited. The forest that rooted at the foot of the volcano and carpeted the rest of the island testified that the last, full-blown eruption occurred a hundred years ago. A new eruption was overdue and the mountain's spate of activity indicated that there was not a lot of time left.

Zei took Koji by the elbow and together they fled from deck to shore. The sand was onyx and felt like smooth, fine ash - loose enough that their feet sunk into its depth. At the end they reached the encampment: a tent and fire, the sight of the boat visible through the trees.

At noon an expedition was organized to survey the interior of the island - Fen and Xi volunteered to go while Li and Chuan opted to stay. The goal was to trace Tenzin's path of discovery. Tenzin was the (only) archeologist who examined that island way, way back when Sozin reigned. Zei followed Tenzin's journal, convinced that it could be read like a map and failed to appreciate until then and there how the island changed after the century that passed.

Then, when Tenzin came to Volcania, it was a wasteland from shore to shore as it just survived an eruption. Now, that its features were eroded by weather, carpeted by forest, Zei found it hard to gauge the locations of landmarks the diary described. But he theorized that the orientations of its features could not have changed significantly. And with the volcano as the ultimate central landmark, he began to notice a congruency between atlas and geography.

A mile into that trek, with the sun at the peak of the volcano, Zei's obsession was rewarded as his party stumbled into a region of wilderness that had been systematically deforested.

"Look at that," Xi said, aiming a finger at the ground. Fen saw a log and lifted it with his hands. It was mossy and rugged, covered by patches of algae. The point of interest was at its end. It was not splintered as a log ought to be if it fell due to nature. Rather, it was clean as if it had been sawed. "Somebody beat you, professor."

"Hmmm - was it possible?" the professor asked aloud as he rubbed his chin. Xi examined the log after Fen let it drop. "That cut doesn't look at all like firebending."

"It was cut long ago but not too long ago," the assistant added, indicating at log's still sturdy, heavy bulk. "Judging by how long it is, by how long it could have been - erosion - and factoring the growth of the forest after Tenzin's expedition and today. Maybe it fell twenty years ago?" 

"Younger," Zei mused. "Maybe ten years ago."

They labored onward, into the center of the clearing. As they tread they realized how thoroughly unnatural the area actually appeared to be. They tripped upon row and rows of logs and every so often a stump. It could not be denied that somebody explored that part of the island in the not too distant past but traces of who they were and what they did beyond deforesting had been swept away.

Zei continued to hypothesize: "It could not have been Fire Nation and, certainly, it could not have been Earth Kingdom. At least nobody of the Earth Kingdom reported such an investigation. And, frankly, except for those of us at the Department of Archeology at Ba Sing Se University, there aren't too many people who know about Volcania."

Once upon a time that fact had been different. During the waning epoch of Avatar Kiyoshi's rule, especially after the demise of Chin the Conqueror, the Fire Nation itself was set ablaze with interest about everything historical - a kind of rebirth of knowledge as it were. Instead of tearing down the old in favor of the new - a cultural pattern entrenched throughout the world and not unique to any nation - they began to focus in on their history. They gathered up as much information about the past as possible. They hired men like Tenzin to come and teach a whole new generation of native archeologists - and somewhere along the way, amid all of that progress, the Island of Volcania became a center of attention. Sadly, Tenzin's journal was censored by the Dai Li at the start of the war, what remained did not make it clear why the elite inner circle of the Fire Nation royalty was obsessed with that island.

Indeed - their fascination about their past was coincidental with a revolution of the present. It was as if antiquity stored a vast reservoir of knowledge that allowed them to advance unlike any other corner of the world. The climax of their fury came with Avatar Roku's emergence - and with the Avatar a Fire Nation citizen they felt truly destined to rule the whole of humanity itself. Then, almost at the start of the war, that interest was stifled - it extinguished as quickly as it flared. 

Did they find what they were looking for? Or were they so hell-bent to reach their future that their past simply did not matter anymore? Nobody knew, exactly, the Fire Curtain - as the academics called it - made them and their motives a mystery.

At last, at the edge of the clearing, they came into the site that Tenzin dug a hundred years ago. The location of it was preserved by who or what ever returned to the island. To Zei and Koji the area was splayed like a feast of thanksgiving. Its trenches were arranged in perfect rows and columns. Its depths were enough to cover and encompass Fen if he stood within it. It was complete, exactly as described, and with the aid of the journal it was possible to recreate the activity Tenzin's party engaged at the very last day of the expedition - when the funds were exhausted. Weather and minor volcanic spasms conspired to erode the edge of the complex; those who returned were more concerned with the center than with the limits.

The archeologists just could not get the thought out of their minds. Those who came after Tenzin.... But who were they? And what were they after? They did not seem to leave anything except that clearing which was a tool to uncover the dig-site. 

At length there came a breakthrough of sorts - a discovery that showed those interlopers had been up to something....

If Zei were not Zei, he would have been dejected at the discovery. Koji, already an ambitious young student, was melancholic at the letdown further exploration was certain to uncover. Yet the professor did not lose a breath of enthusiasm. Instead of admitting defeat, the archeologist grasped at the last remaining straw.... There were still mysteries waiting to be solved - not the least of which centered about what happened at that island when nobody was there to see it.

It was, as it tended to be, Fen and Xi who uncovered the find - a doorway embedded into the earth at the base of a trench. 

The journal indicated that such a trench existed, however, anything connected to it had been censored - torn - out of the diary. 

Zei's heart skipped a beat as he assembled the puzzle and realized the doorway, and whatever lay behind it, was the key to understanding the nature of Tenzin's discovery. A discovery which was too shocking for the Dai Li to allow. Standing at the center of it, the professor sensed, too, that there was something all together odd about that trench and its doorway. He could not tell exactly what it was. Except that the excavation of the dig-site at that location just seemed to be too perfect - as if machined - as if it was possible....

Regardless, those two heavy metal doors were a curiosity. They could not have been imported with Tenzin's party, as the Fire Nation industry at that era was ill-prepared to manufacture steel of such quality. Let alone of such workmanship. Their lock-and-key mechanism also appeared out of time and place - if, indeed, any technology yet known were capable of its construction. It was not alien, there were many examples of analogs, it was simply too refined.

Individually, the doors were thinner than wider, and had to be opened together to admit a man. They were dense with a rough and unpolished texture. They were coated with a forest green paint that no doubt added to its defiance against weather, as rust was undetectable. The mechanism that freed the doorway consisted of a wheel and rods that connected to the wheel and terminated within the concrete at the perimeter of the frame. When engaged, a turn of the wheel loosened the rods and released the doorway from the frame. It was the wheel's thin, inaccessible axle that was arrested by the lock-and-key mechanism.

Unable to force the wheel, they probed into the earth around the frame of the doorway, believing that another entrance could be found still unexcavated. Instead they discovered that everything was attached to a hardened shaft of concrete that extended deep, deep into the ground. There was no way to determine its dimensions without digging and filling the trench. Worse, the jagged perimeter of the shaft, revealed by their digging, combing fingers, displayed the exotic nature of its material - a fact that took the academics' breaths away.

Zei saw a material like at a ruin. Koji knew of it only through sketches. 

Ordinarily, concrete was a frozen mixture of many different stones. As such, it tended to be a commonly found material throughout excavations of prehistory. Knowledge of concrete did not vanish (entirely) with development. What established that concrete as extraordinary was that it contained rods. 

Rods of a metal like iron jetted out of the edges.

"Amazing," the archeologist exclaimed. Aroused, he unearthed more and more examples of stubs and brought to light a few long rods which had been bent through eons of catastrophe. The rods were adorned with patterns that indicated machining - the output of a factory, of an industry lost to antiquity. "Material of this type is found only in a few locations and even there it is not so intact!"

"A rod reinforced concrete...."

"Almost impossible to break because of the iron inside of it. Koji - do you know what this means? These doors were created and added onto the shaft by the very people who poured the concrete. They were not additions setup later. Except that lock-and-key pendant. I think our friends - those who came after Tenzin - added it." Fen and Xi looked at each other a moment while the academics mused. "All of this is tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years old."

Zei stopped the lecture and searched for a rock.

"What is it?" asked Koji.

"I need a rock. All of this. All of it. Is ancient - but Tenzin did not find the doorway blocked, I know, and we need to get through it if this expedition is going to succeed."

Fen picked up a boulder while Xi watched.

Koji's eyes widened at the heft of the brute.

"Zei! You are willing to destroy an artifact like that?" he asked, stunned at the implication of the act.

"The journal details a tunnel and I am convinced it exists behind that doorway," Zei expanded. "Those who came after Tenzin must have uncovered the tunnel, too, and added the lock-and-key mechanism. It must be removed. Yes, it is cruel ... it must be."

The bare-chested behemoth with the third-eye-tattoo worked the boulder against the artifact. When it proved to be too well-protected, as it dangled beside the wheel, he turned, attacking every last weak-spot, settling at the hinges as they were exposed and undefended. His hands swelled and glowed red, roughed - raw - braised, with the dust of the rock as it disintegrated. Although built to endure, it could not withstand Fen, and soon the age of the doorway worked against itself.

"It would be so much easier if we used a firebender," Xi mumbled - Fen grunted.

With the rock turned into a pile of dust - and the hinges smashed, battered into scrap - they looked on with awe as Fen grasped the free edge of door and pried it off the rest of the way. The doorway fell aside, warped around its wheel, split into two and slipped onto the dirt.

The yawn-like maw that had been freed revealed a shaft onyx like night - bursts of stale, noxious air erupted out of the depths.

They lit two torches and two lamps with their flint. Zei was the first to enter. Koji clamored to be at his side. Fen and Xi took the rear of the train.

"No," Zei told Koji. "Stay at the end and study the details."

At the edge of the doorway were steps, carved out of concrete, that invited the train of men further underground. They followed steady though cautious and, eventually, when they lost sight of that exit, its steps faded into a down-slope ramp-like passage. None of it was natural despite the way roots broke through the concrete and hung like an upside down carpet above their heads. The symmetry of the passage and the uniformity of its feature revealed it to be carved by man.

After a stretch they came onto a passage where their path was obstructed - a significant portion of roof was caved. Not everything was spared the ravage of erosion and already Zei wondered what other obstacles yet awaited. They slid through the debris, dodging rubble and unidentifiable, fallen structure. Soon their decent became an annoyance as that state of dilapidation became normal. Then, again, they came into unblocked stretches of tunnels. Then, again, they were confronted by chaos.

The air continued to be breathable yet they could not escape its stagnation. Everything was hot due to the volcano, whose magma permeated the island. True enough, at a juncture where the tunnel forked left and right, the rejected pathway was a chamber ablaze with the heavy seepage of magma. It oozed like blood through fissures scratched into it walls. The professor voiced a certain level of regret about not following that pathway, as it seemed to be straighter beyond the chamber. The student echoed that it seemed impossible to endure such heat and that it should be left alone. 

Still, Koji stood by that archway to contemplate the chamber, to confront the mystery its view teased of a world inaccessible beyond its pools of molten, fiery rock. As the silhouettes of the crew passed, he knelt and studied what he saw within that magma encrusted chamber. There was a wide, unobstructed portal at the other end of the room. It emptied into a tunnel that ran straight into the earth. The archway that marked the boundary between the chamber and the tunnel dripped with magma. Enough of it remained to show that it was adorned with symbols. He was too far to be certain but it seemed to be writing and it seemed to be the Riyu....

The earth shook - Koji was almost knocked flat into that chamber of fire. He rolled back, away in time to see Fen arise and Xi point at a fissure that just appeared. Zei staggered toward the site of it - Koji yelled 'wait' and staggered to be next to Zei after he gauged a suspicious look coming from the faces of Fen and Xi. A sound echoed out of the earth through that wide, jagged crack - it was a ghastly unspeakable mixture strangely akin to the melody of the surf as it breaks. Then the fissure glowed a dull, dark red as if it were the mouth of a tunnel hundreds and hundreds of feet above an ocean of magma.

"Maybe we ought to go back to camp?" Koji suggested, breathless.

"Let's see what's left of the tunnel." Zei paused and wiped his brow with his sleeve. "Alright, we're headed into a place where only a handful of people have been to in the last ten thousand years. Let's be careful and cautious of quakes."

Koji straightened and the crew nodded.

They progressed, heading deeper and deeper under the ground. 

Onward the tunnel took an altogether new and different feeling. Where the vaulted roofs and the flattened walls were once devoid of details, were now decorated with a trove of features. They were explorers in the midst of another world. It was strange, though, that in spite of its character it was through and through the work of man. 

Zei was filled with a great and reckless exuberance, declaring such superlatives as 'amazing' and 'extraordinary' as those artifacts came into view. Koji, at the end of the train, was silent though upset at the decadence of his advisor - he was too concerned with safety at that juncture to divide his attention away from Fen and Xi - their behavior was strange to say the least. They were as eager as Zei to break into the tunnel yet did not display the kind of wonder exuded by the professor - indeed, they seemed to be bored as if they saw the likes of those tunnels already. 

True, to be certain, there was nothing fundamentally alien about that complex, as it was the product of man. It was simply that the location and the age - and the advancement - that were out of the ordinary. The details only now coming into focus attested to the mystery of that civilization in whose ruins they were strolling. There were bulkheads embedded into the walls, made of steel and bolted with rivets the sizes of fists. There were pipes running across the ceiling, across the walls, twisting and turning, wherever they met an obstacle. Wires and other unknown fixtures dangled off of the pipes, a few of which were fallen onto the floor. The floor itself was dominated by an almost endless series of boards, framed by straight, long rails - a pattern that resembled the layout of the tram at Ba Sing Se.

"It corroborates a claim Tenzin stated to Mako," the professor explained to the student, "about the board and rail system analogous with the tram at Ba Sing Se."

The tunnel ended at another ornate archway where it emptied into a cavern - that was not a cavern.

"If those were the tunnels, professor, then these are the platforms."

"The station," Zei whispered unable to believe they travelled so far into antiquity. "A station thousands and thousands of years old and not powered by earthbending. The civilization that built this technology...."

The earth rattled and stones tumbled onto the platform.

They explored the station, noting the parallel layout of track below, the network of support above, the passages at the perimeter no doubt intended to carry passengers into even more remote, buried locations. 

"Koji, that, this, is the feeling of finding another world, another universe! It's like birthing a life." Approaching a wall, while Fen and Xi tended to their light, Zei produced a brush and swiped it across the ash that covered the tile at the wall. Under their light the tile glimmered as if it retained a very glossy surface beneath the soot. Indeed, it was the dew like twinkle that caught his attention. Feverishly, he removed the crust. Franticly, he dropped the brush. He fetched the journal and compared the copy to the original image. 

Koji took the instrument and continued the excavation of the wall. When it was scrubbed he saw the mural - and the writing displayed by the tile of the mural. The script ... it almost appeared readable. Yet that was the trick of the Riyu -always to be familiar though illegible.

"Amazing," Zei said at length.

"It's the Riyu," said Koji. "I saw a trace of it within that chamber of magma."

"We reached the site of Tenzin's discovery. This," said the professor, turning around toward the crew, toward the student, "this was as far as that expedition went. As to those who came after...."

"Do you suppose they left that behind?" Xi asked, looking at a track between platforms.

Zei raced to see what it could be. Along the boards and rails, which were stopped by a cave-in at the mouth of an archway, was the outline of a figure. It was a corpse - its skull crushed by the rubble, its flesh - where it was not stripped off of the bone - was desiccated. The clothes unlike anything the academics saw: a stylized black with metallic accessories at the chest, wrist and collar. In that sense it resembled a uniform although it was not of any known, extinct or extant, group. Beyond that the body offered no hint whatsoever about who or what it represented. 

Exploring that track they found another collapse and two other remains identical to the original except that they were not killed by any visible injury and their uniforms were gray not black. 

"There must have been a quake or an eruption and the smoke must have gotten at them," Xi said of those bodies.

Turning them about, Zei commented aloud about how (relatively) young they were with respect to the age of the complex. Indeed, the cave-ins were not that aged as judged by the tiny, residual amount of sediment that fell atop. He estimated that the quake and their deaths were within a ten to twenty year period - not unlike the age of the log. 

So, little by little, everything began to make sense.

They were the remains of those who came after Tenzin. They cleared the jungle and refurbished the excavation. They ventured into the complex. For reasons they could not fathom yet those people had been there. Then there was a quake or an eruption - not enough to destroy everything of course - and the fellows of those victims left the complex and locked the doorway to keep their activity a secret.

The professor wondered about what those uniformed people could have wanted with a site like Volcania. The assistant went to work turning and examining the remains. Meanwhile, Fen and Xi watched with their indifference. 

Yes, the clothes were uniforms by virtue of their commonalities - even among the grey and the black variants there were more details in common than in difference. What truly, really differed were the minutest arrangements of insignias - their metal, color, design. It screamed of the hierarchy found within an army. What kind of army? He could not say. The uniform they wore was just too strange to allow identification.

What had to be the most striking feature, however, was not metal but cloth - an armband they all wore - a bold red armband. With a white circle. With a crooked, black cross at its center.

Zei took the armband and commented about its elasticity. Koji said that it must have meant something to those people, thus, identifying what it was ought to reveal who they were. That was not everything - the academics noticed symbols throughout the uniform that were written with the Meiguo.

"Riyu and Meiguo - at the same time and place?" Koji mused. "The Riyu was to be expected as Tenzin went on and on about it. But the Meiguo, professor, the Meiguo splattered all over bodies that are not even fifty years dead, the Meiguo that has not been written or read in tens of thousands of years."

"Languages of long, lost civilizations ... or ... so we thought...."

The assistant arose to follow the professor, leaving the trinkets atop of the chests of the bodies. When they and their light passed, the crew - Fen and Xi - came onto the remains and rummaged through their uniforms. With vulture-like appetite, their fingers - which had not been interested with the unseemly, graverobber side of archeology - ravaged the artifacts.

Zei theorized and Koji watched - the way Fen and Xi scavenged was not reckless. They knew what they wanted as if they understood what those trinkets meant. For a moment he struggled to recall how, exactly, those two joined their party.

Zei and Koji walked past that section of track and ventured into another where they stumbled onto an antechamber. There were another set of heavy metal doors - except they were not locked and looked as if they had been jammed into the wall where a crack formed. They were not part of the architecture. 

The chamber at the other side of the doorway was not immense as judged by the dimensions of the complex observed up to that point. The ceiling was vaulted and supported with a network of struts. Their light revealed that the roof itself was composed of rock. Letting their eyes fall the course of the ceiling to the walls to the floor they saw that everything had been carved out of the earth and fitted - like the doorway itself - after the fact. There was no doubt to their minds that those who came after Tenzin, those whose remains littered the station, were responsible for what they witnessed then and there. Otherwise traces of it at least would have been noted by the journal - the diary was filled with enough redundancy that a word or two would have escaped the Dai Li's censor.

What the chamber contained, though, proved to be so alien that they were at a loss to describe them. There were such things casually strewn about that no words existed to name them. Gods, how were they supposed to catalog the contents of another universe? At that juncture, as far as they knew, those people who created those wonders could have come from another planet, along with their uniforms. 

Yet, what was startling, awe-inspiring, what was a curious though abstract notion - until that chamber turned it into reality - was the impossibility of its age. Artifacts covered with the Meiguo should have been ancient. Instead, they appeared as new as a hundred years old. A few items were so vivid they might have been freshly-minted. 

Of course, there were a few items with known analogies: chairs, desks, cases and the like. Implements that although strange served the purpose of writing and drawing. Scales of the most complex and intricate order. Boxes filled with wires and tubes. It was what remained that proved to be a problem. Books were written with the Meiguo. Maps of unknown lands with unknown names. Scrolls that, unraveled, revealed highly-precise geometric designs.

"Professor - it's a laboratory - filled with bits and pieces of their technology. Those people, who or what ever they were, came to this island to create something. By the looks of it, something that had been broken and needed parts for repair - maybe parts from this station? This technology defies description - what if it represents another kind of bending? One that was common at prehistory but man moved away from...."

"Koji - imagine the possibility of it - everything we're seeing is new by archeological standards. That means that right now, now in the world that we inhabit, there are men like those men, with this technology."

"Impossible - I mean - I mean - they should have been noticed?"

Zei looked at Koji, his face framed with lamplight, and concluded: "Indeed, it is fantastical - these people were alien in an alien land, out of time and place, where would they be hiding? Where could they be hiding?"

Suddenly there was a great burst of light that outshined their fire.

It was Xi who, by accident or by intent, while rummaging through the chamber, pressed a button that activated a long, cylindrical object atop the table. The shaft was metal. The end was glass. Out of which emerged the straightest, brightest beam of light. It hurt everyone's eyes to look at its direction.

Zei took it and struggled to find that button - with a click it was off.

"Professor!" Koji shouted - he had kept his eyes shut and was still able to see, faintly, as Fen and Xi again approached Zei in that menacingly, chilly way. Without a thought, he pushed the professor out of the way as something emerged like lightning out of Fen's third-eye-tattoo - it connected with his own shoulder.

"That guy's a firebender," Zei expressed with shock as he staggered onto his feet.

Smoke filled the chamber. Dazed. Confused. He saw only intermittently the bulk of the crew loom toward Koji and fire away another shot.

"No!" he screamed, grasping the edge of the table, raising it and flinging it violently at the attackers. The distraction caused the blast of fire to miss and strike the ceiling instead.

Zei fell back onto the ground and fumbled about within its shadow and darkness, looking for a place to duck and cover. He felt hands clutching at his back, trying to grasp and yank at his shirt. He stopped and rolled, swatting away with the blunt end of the light-cylinder - an act that elicited a yelp that could have come from either Fen or Xi.

Amid the struggle the light-cylinder turned on - its bean shinned into the face of the brute. The colossus staggered aback, his third-eye-tattoo blinked as another shot of lightning went astray. 

The earth, stirred by the ammunition, responded with a fury of its own - the chamber shook and everything was knocked aside. 

Smoke descended, its heat spread, filled the chamber. The lamps were dying as they fell and scattered about the ground. There came the sounds of fists ransacking through cases. Somebody lifted a lamp to help the search. Objects were flung left and right as they were quickly scanned then rejected. The crew was after something....

Zei crawled on hands and knees and found Koji beneath a pile of junk.

"Koji," Zei whispered, uncovering the student.

"I - won't make it."

There was scarcely a voice left.

"Stop that!" He struggled to find anything to say - yet - was at a loss. "I get you in. I get you out. That's the deal."

"No - Zei - go!" He coughed - and it was then that the blood at the mouth was visible. "I get to be part of history, Zei." With the last surge of strength he pushed Zei away and then relaxed....

Zei was frozen.

Fen resumed, targeting and firing at random. Xi, however, continued the frantic search for whatever it was they were after. Zei struggled to keep calm - he located the exit and crawled toward it. Along the way he neared where Fen and Xi stopped to rummage - they dropped a sack full of papers which spread about the floor. Zei grabbed an item that looked to be a map.

The earth quaked and a fissure gashed the wall - the glow of magma swirled out of the rent.

With a newfound burst of energy, and taking advantage of that distraction, Zei arose and ran toward the doorway. From there the world beneath the ground was like an impenetrable abyss. He stumbled about as he worked platform to platform, all the while trying to keep track of his position relative to his memory of the station. He knew, more or less, how many tracks remained between him and the tunnel to the exit and in what direction to go. There was no teacher like experience and despite everything - when life and death depended on memory - he failed to maintain any sense of bearings.

He feared he would be trapped within that complex forever and out of desperation itself he settled with a trench. He followed its track to its end where he unearthed an alcove. He did not attempt to use the light-cylinder - as it would have revealed his location to his would be killers - instead he fumbled, feeling the detail of the antechamber while coping with the heat and fouled sulfur-laden air.

He found a ladder - a set of rungs attached onto the wall - and climbed it with his sack across his back filled with relics. Soon he realized he lurked within a shaft just large enough to admit a man. Scaling the ladder, like a rat leaving a sinker, he became aware of a glow beneath.... He feared it was Fen and Xi - and sighed, as if relieved, that it was only magma. Thankfully, it proved a light - dim as it was - and the shaft itself terminated at the base of a tunnel where he stopped to breathe.

The earth, though, did not take a break from its upheaval.

Zei covered his eyes leaving only the slits between his fingers to view. He turned on the light-cylinder. A flash erupted - it was enough to reveal the nature of the tunnel. He followed it upward until he came onto what appeared to be an archway. There he turned off the light-cylinder. He did not know what powered it or how long it would be operational therefore it was best to conserve its use.

A little while later he felt that the air was getting cooler rather than warmer. It seemed, too, scented by the dew of the jungle. And there was another factor wafting through the breeze but he could not identify it.

At length he was confronted by what he prayed would not be the final obstacle to freedom - that fork in the complex they passed at the very start of their adventure - the chamber of magma.

Magma everywhere - everything was aglow like hell would be.

He paused to catch his breath and prepare his mind....

Throughout his travels he witnessed ceremonies where initiates walked a path of fire. The trick to survive was to go slow. In spite of it, to go slow. Let the feet build a layer of ash. Using that as theory, he took a few tentative steps into the chamber, then another and another, then more and more. At length he found that he crossed the center of the chamber and knew stopping at that juncture was not an option. So against the pain that could not be quelled he continued that slow and steady pace.

The earth shook and added its own flavor of danger to the mix of lethality that was the chamber. Such as it was he struggled just to maintain upright. Arms wide, body swaying left and right along with the ground, he took wide, low stances to prevent a topple. Throughout that ordeal the exit seemed like a tease - too close to be real....

And, then, due to that quake, the other end of the chamber collapsed and something large, something heavy crowned through the hole that had been punched into the roof. It looked like an animal about to be born. Another rumble and the crack widened and whatever it was skidded into the chamber of magma where its momentum carried it toward Zei.

He screamed at the sight of the monstrosity. It was, no doubt, the train carried by the boards and rails through the complex. Now crumpled, aflame, its appearance inspired fear - and speed. He ran, feeling like his feet were about to burst into flame. Yet he was not fast enough to escape the train. Its front contacted his rear and quickly he jumped onto its bumper to avoid another death.

The vehicle raced toward the exit. It skid and threatened to flip - he launched off of it at the end and raced into the tunnel beyond. It crashed into a wall with a roar and raised a cloud of dust at its wake.

Shaken, and not all together certain about what happened, Zei simply continued to race toward the end of the tunnel. There came the steps. There came the doorway. There came the trench. Out of the complex, he thought he was safe - it was a matter of getting to Li and Chuan and dragging the boat to sea and that would be the end of it.

Then that illusion of freedom crashed....

The professor was surrounded by torches - torches attached to hands - hands attached to arms ... men. A tribe of men. Loinclothed and with very angry warpaint.

"Er," Zei raised his hands above his head, "hello, there, er, I am professor...."

"We know who you are, Professor Zei." A figure wandered out of the jungle into sight. A Fire Nation citizen to be sure, tall and broad. He could have been a twin of Fen by the looks of it. "We followed your departure at Chin City." The man took off his hat, revealing a head as shaved as Fen's head - Zei replied identically. "Your reputation proceeds you - forgive me - the name is Kuzon."

The figure extended a hand, confused, Zei blinked at what the offer was supposed to mean - the man shook, realizing the error, bowing instead.

It was night and what he sensed yet could not identify was the smell of torchfire - he did not expect company....

Guarded by two of the tribesmen, Zei was walked toward the edge of the clearing, there he was met by a group of warriors with sticks with heads of Li and Chuan upon them.

The volcano grumbled - fire bellowed out of its peak and the air got warmer and more and more laden with sulfur.

Looking toward the trench, at the annoyance of the guards, he spotted Fen and Xi coming out of the doorway with sacks of loot.

"Graverobber," Zei blurted, disgusted.

"Come, now, Professor Zei, we cannot steal what belongs to us!" Kuzon scoffed - revealing an accent that was not entirely common, if known, outside of the Fire Curtain. "I may as well call you hypocrite," he added, while opening the sack Zei carried - he found the light-cylinder among other effects.

"What are you doing, anyway, the Fire Nation lost its interest with its past," Zei asked.

"Fire Nation!" Kuzon smiled, playfully, as if accused by a child. He stroked the right side of his moustache. "Fire Nation? What are any of these ... nations? Hmmm, my aim and your aim are identical," he added, using the light-cylinder as a kind of extended, wagging finger. "We are motivated by the truth. I am shocked, frankly, at your attitude. I studied you and your adventures many, many years, Professor Zei - you cannot fathom my reach. You cannot imagine how strong, how deep my interest with long lost civilization is. Indeed, you cannot fathom, whatsoever, just what that subject means to me."

Kuzon walked about the crowd of warriors, admiring their catch - fresh and dripping with blood.

"If you want to talk about long lost anything - just take a gander at these men - ancient sun worshippers. Theirs is quite a storied bloodline, let me tell you, magnificent examples of what a man ought to be, aren't they? The perfect prototype of a perfect race - is it any wonder we chose them to carry our seed into this world? How did the rest of you become such a muddle of races - and nations? How did you fall, Professor Zei, do you know that? I know that...."

Zei leaned into Kuzon - as far as the guards felt comfortable.

"You are a raving madman."

Just as Kuzon was about to reply the peak of the volcano roared and the island rattled. At that moment, that instant, when their eyes turned toward the mountain, Zei grabbed his sack and light-cylinder and fled into the wilderness.

A stunned Kuzon barked an order to follow using the native's own language. It was too little, too late. Zei was already engulfed inside the forest and everyone became preoccupied by the volcano as its yawn was followed with explosions. Meanwhile, Kuzon continued to shout, yelling devolving into that accent - a guttural weapon of a language. The professor's would-be pursuers appeared to revolt against the madness of it and retreated toward their own escape. 

Smoke filled the sky and obscured the starlight. It was only by accident that Zei came onto the ruins of their encampment. He did not stop, though, as the pathway to the boat was within reach. Of course, he did not know what to do with the vessel - it was beached and anyway could not be helmed alone. Alas those concerns about escape proved to be moot - embers ejected out of the volcano crashed onto the deck and set the wood ablaze. Other chunks of molten, fiery debris littered the shore where they sizzled. A steady trickle of rock continued to fall into the water.

"Damn it!" he shouted.

He heard a voice call out of the water. 

Bewildered, he staggered onto the shore as a canoe floated into view.

"Turuk!" Zei raced into the water. A hand reached and helped the man board the vessel. "I thought you were going home."

"When I spotted that Fire Nation ship ... I circled the island just to be cautious. And Koji and the rest?"

Zei shut his eyes and shook.

"No," he whispered.

And with that they slipped away.


	2. Chapter 2

Originally Published April 1, 2011

* * *

"The Swampy Water Tribe is scattered throughout the south, south-western, western coasts of the continent," said Zei, as he tapped at those areas of the map with a ruler. "They are elusive - however - they are people - not aliens, not spirits, they may or may not be mystics - I leave that to you." A chuckle echoed about the chamber. The professor tabled the ruler and faced the audience - the students were etching his lecture into their tablets. "As their swamp bending style attests, they are related to the Northern Water Tribe, with bits and pieces of a very early form of Earth Kingdom Civilization adopted into their society. Yes - a mixture again! They date to the Migration - fifty thousand years ago - they existed long enough that a degree of inter-nation-blending occurred in spite of their isolation. It stands to reason, then, that swampbending itself is also a form of mixed-style-bending. Water. And. Earth." Zei paused - and blinked, spotting what had to be script drawn onto a girl's fluttered eyelids. He adjusted his spectacles and resumed his chalk on board lecture. "A mixed-style-bending, like the kind exhibited by the sandbenders - air and earth."

The gong was struck - and in the wake of its vibration the students arose and fled toward the exits.

"Just to remind you - next week we are going to finish the Migration, then we are going to reconstruct the world as it existed prior to Elementation, then...." he shouted into the void of auditorium emerging as the students were leaving and, as he was about to talk about their exam, they were gone and he stood alone.

He sighed, then, shuffled away through the corridor.

"Zei?" It was Mako - the Dean of Archeology - approaching at the other end of the passage. "I'm truly, truly sorry about Koji - I was only just informed about it."

"Mako." Zei grasped the man by the shoulder. "I thought it would be the end of everything. It - did you read all of my letter?"

"All of it - it was short, though, tragic," he added, shutting his eyes and shaking his head. "Awful. Come - we need to talk."

Mako gestured and Zei followed. It was like an adventure of a kind. The Office of the Dean - a map was needed simply to find where it was located. It lay past stairwells, doorways. Into a cellar filled with mazes of crates that students were too afraid of to explore. Onto an alcove marked by the name 'Tenzin'. There, at the sanctuary, the office was shut and a lamp was lit.

Alone - without the Dai Li to spy - they were able to speak freely.

"I fear the Dai Li may be onto your system," said Mako at the back of the desk. "I deciphered the letter, though, without difficulty."

"I kept it short, deliberately, short and to the point," explained Zei, sitting, leaning at the front of the desk. "I hesitated to reveal everything that happened at Volcania. I feared they'd catch wind of it, then come and search my belongings at the gate to Ba Sing Se. I almost left the materials at my other home." He whipped the sack onto the desk and put a hand on top of the pile. He took a deep, deep breath then relaxed. "You ... I still can't make heads or tails about what I uncovered."

"Volcania was never an easy topic to discuss, frankly, I don't think Tenzin understood it all." The dean lit another two lamps and set them besides the sack. "I gather you retraced my old master's steps." A nod came as a reply, then a look down, away."And the tunnels? And the station?"

"I found the complex as it was intimated by the journal." Suddenly, as their talk focused onto the archeology, then and there they seemed to be reanimated. "All of it, almost as he found it, yet," the professor leaned into the desk, "we were not the first to reach the complex. Another group of men - an army of sorts - came to the island after Tenzin and we found evidence of their occupation."

"Fire Nation?" he asked.

Mako reached into a drawer and produced out of it a bottle of tonic.

Zei filled a couple of glasses with that concoction. 

"Unknown," he replied.

Taking a sip of the brew, he added: "We found them - those who came after Tenzin - dead. They had been killed by the effect of an eruption at that station. We discovered a trove ... artifacts ... that were not native to that site and were, instead, added by said interlopers." He sipped another taste of twangy, sharp spirit - then untied the sack and displayed its treasure. "An armband, taken from a body. A map, taken from a laboratory - that had been created by that army. A light-cylinder, an example of their technology, taken from that chamber."

"A light-cylinder?"

"A light-cylinder!"

Zei gathered the artifact - it had been split - and arranged its components in front of Mako.

"I took it apart to thwart the Dai Li if my travel had been intercepted. What you see, splayed, appears to be harmless. Strange, yet, harmless. The shaft is hollow like a pipe, these shorter, fatter cylinders fit into the shaft and provide it with energy. The bottom end is a spring. The top end is a construction of glass. They both need to be screwed onto the shaft. The light comes out of the glass - out of the bulb to be exact - when it is activated by a button."

As Zei spoke, demonstrating the components and putting the parts of the light-cylinder together, he gave the finished product to Mako who then took it apart, again, to examine the artifact with a magnifier.

The outside was both remarkable and unremarkable as judged by its lack of detail when compared with the rest of the artifact. The inside - those short, fat power-cylinders Zei insisted energized the object - were covered with writing Mako identified as a type of Meiguo. They were absolutely identical, each and every power-cylinder, carried the same, exact text. Attention then turned onto the bulb, a combination of glass and metal, that appeared to be hollow except where it contained a framework of tiny, needle-like filaments.

"A simple object although its workmanship is astounding," the dean remarked as the professor assembled the artifact. "How did they add the metal into the glass like that?"

"A wonder," he uttered the only answer that could be given, "and it is the bulb that glows and makes the light."

Zei aimed the device at the ceiling and turned it on - a beam of light, bright as day, illuminated the office.

Mako poured another shot of tonic.

"That laboratory the interlopers added onto the complex was filled with many other devices like this. And - it was incredible - how much of it they looted and how much of it survived I cannot say."

He shook out of the shock that the light-cylinder imparted.

"Yes, of course, that foreign ... expert ... Kuzon?"

"Koji tried to warn me about the danger." Zei took a sip then pushed the glass away. "If it were not for Turuk, I would be stranded, dead ... I donno. Kuzon followed my boat out of Chin City - which was where I hired Fen and Xi - they had been planted into my party deliberately."

"The eruption was violent," Mako added, recalling news that spread, even into Ba Sing Se, about a catastrophe at the Fire Nation homeland. "You suppose Kuzon left the island alive?"

"I donno." He paused to sigh. "My vessel was damaged and, with the kind of eruption that followed, it could be that they were swept away."

Mako watched Zei take the light-cylinder apart.

"It's too dangerous. It's too dangerous. Zei - as your advisor and your friend - all of this could be a disaster for you." Mako reclined, folding his hands atop his lap, and recalled what happened when another archeologist he knew very, very well went too far, too fast. Then he noticed the other two artifacts brought out of Volcania. "There's a reason the Dai Li censored Tenzin's journal. Which, I need to say, after your letter arrived, they started to look for it at the archives."

"Er, it was returned, if they search again it will be like it was always there," Zei whispered. "Mako - think of the truth - first and foremost. If archeology teaches us anything, it's that nothing is forever. The Dai Li will be in a museum and torment nobody but historians!"

"Perhaps," the dean replied and with a wave of the hand - the wag of a finger - direct at the professor he lectured: "until that day we need to be mindful. Trust me, I know of your respect for Tenzin and his theories...."

"His ideas can be proved. Can there be any doubt of it now?" He took the power-cylinders and tapped them onto the desk. "Look at them. New. Mint. Like it came out of a factory. And covered with the Meiguo. Can there be any doubt of it now! That not only was there an advanced and planet-wide civilization but that parts of it, someway, somehow, remain with us."

Another bottle of tonic was uncorked.

Zei stood and gazed at Mako's original tile mural - of Wan Shi Tong's Library - letting air, seeping through vents, work into his lungs. He took another sip of the brew and let a thought slip: "I bet Kuzon knows of this idea, too, and is looking for that civilization. What was it he said? We shared the same aim, or, something like that."

Mako noted the archeologist's steely, cold gaze. It was a manic sort of urge - that hunger to explore the great wide world - condensed into a mere piece of anatomy. It was the fever of a man at the verge of discovery. It was familiar and he sat and gulped, recalling his ancient master Tenzin. 

"Long ago I sensed it within you," he started out of the blue, "I hoped that with experience the fire would be mollified, somewhat. You are a brilliant teacher, Zei, the life of an academic - with its listless day to day politics - it's not the kind of world you want. You want to be out there, in the field, digging a trench, getting dirty. There's a freedom beyond the walls of Ba Sing Se. I will not deny that I feel its tug - from time to time - this talk of far-flung, ancient civilizations, it drove everyone mad who delved into it."

The Dean of Archeology sighed - then examined one by one the other two artifacts.

A map printed onto a sheet of silk and folded like a pamphlet. The first side was filled with lists, figures - tables of symbols - their meaning incomprehensible as they were written with the Meiguo. The second side displayed a strange and unknown landform - an island by the look of it. 

The island was a plethora of structure. The south was wide, semi-circular with a few indentations here and there. Its east and west were large and small, respectively, and adorned with a couple of coves like bays. The north was dominated by a feature - a curved peninsula surrounded by an archipelago of tinier, misshapen islets. The edges of the coastlines were highlighted with squiggly blue arcs that suggested a coast. Amazing that something like that, an alien map of an alien land, would have displayed such a familiar idea. The image was superimposed with concentric circles and rays emanating out of a red marked point.

There were a few other points - cities? - confined at the coast. A series of peaks, drawn by hand, clumsily, after the rest of the map was completed, suggested a range that snaked up and down the island. Again, like the power-cylinders, like the lists, figures, all of the writings were examples of the Meiguo.

"And with that kind of technology - we cannot yet imagine all of it - if the Fire Nation industry was to get a hold of it? Someway. Somehow. They got the notion that they were superior. Yes, it was something Kuzon said - I remember. A superior race. Destined to rule. Establish a new world order. But with that kind of technology, a their disposal, it would be hard to argue against it, the whole world would be liable to buy into it, wholesale."

"Yeah, it would be intoxicating - corrupting, even - to gain a power like that. A colleague of mine who was into myths, legends, that sort of thing. It reminds me of - yes - fire, it was the element of the gods. And there was a story about a titan - a spirit of a kind - who stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. If they were given or found or were taught about material, like that light-cylinder, it would not take much after that and they would be believing they were the gods themselves...."

"That," Zei said, "it too, too much like an ancient desert belief. Their gods came from the sky as whirlwinds of fire and air. I doubt the Fire Nation would want to be associated with tribes related to people they butchered."

Mako nodded and examined the last artifact - the armband. Red. With a white circle. With a black crocked, bent cross at its center.

"I saw an object like this," the dean confessed, sitting aback. "It was an artifact Karasuki uncovered."

"Karasuki?" asked the professor. "The madman?"

"Karasuki and I were students of Tenzin. Karasuki was a genius, a true, absolute genius. It was he who originated the theory. And deciphered the Riyu. And possibly the Meiguo. Of course, he went mad, the Dai Li made sure of that."

Mako jotted an address on a card and passed it to Zei.

"If you want to do it, indeed, it may be ... instructive ... to meet with the man. Karasuki may be of use to you."

* * *

It was true what Mako said of Zei - the archeologist simply did not realize how profound that observation was.... Yet, as it went by, little by little, it came to be that he could not deny it. He was at home, more at the field than at the university. Of course, the freedom he enjoyed, it came out of academia and that structure it provided. A fact he did not appreciate until it came to that trek, where he stopped to think about what a journey through the country would be like if he abandoned the safety-net to explore alone.

Indeed, as an archeologist whose work was funded by Ba Sing Se University, the professor was not at all accustomed to travel unaccompanied. There was always a gaggle of students that volunteered to come along. They were unwavering, willing and able, to crawl into any kind of situation to advance their degree. He delegated, deferring and relying on others, to do the minutiae. And they were often tasked with the day to day particulars of the excursion, its finances and its itineraries, to free his mind so that it kept focused in on discovery. But that trek to Karasuki would be different.... 

Archeology - it was everything to Zei. He remembered when and where and how the affair was sparked. As a child, digging a fossil. From then to now, trips to libraries and fields and - occasionally - a lecture encapsulated life. Rarely, he consorted with people beyond the boundary of professionalism, and that aloofness toward others no doubt translated to a subtle lack of thought about himself and his purpose outside of academia.

Such as it was, it simply did not bother Zei that he lacked friends, he did not notice that deficiency. Well - to be certain - friends who were alive. The dead and their long, lost civilizations were too great a part of his life to allow a relationship with anybody. At length, much too much about himself remained unknown and untapped until he set his sights across the continent, from Ba Sing Se to Karasuki, when he realized how isolated years of choices had left him.

Zei (and artifacts) travelled, saddled atop of an ostrich-horse.

As they sped along they enjoyed the sites, however, the all too necessary stops were not so pleasant. That initial week of travel proved awkward though valuable. It was within that timeframe that he learned the habits required of a traveler. It was a painful ritual of trial and error to figure out how to deal with innkeepers and how to buy goods and services. Then, and not too long after that, he felt empowered by experience and suddenly thought himself liberated. 

He noted the people encountered at the road. He learned, through observations of others, what profile of traveler was approachable and which were to be avoided. That ability extended to the friendliness and unfriendliness of a town, and to the character of its establishments. It was amazing what he had been oblivious to for years and soon enough he frequented those taverns that were not too rough and tumble.

After a while he noticed a few faces that became more and more regular, more and more familiar and he identified them as his fellow travelers.

It was the spirit of camaraderie that impelled Zei to nod a 'hello' at a particularly curious and lively old man. They were encamped at the edge of a town. It was midnight and the fire warmed them while a minstrel entertained with songs about Omashu.

"I saw you at a dusty old fort a few days ago," Zei said.

"Hmmm, I recall that tavern, indeed, a sleepy little village. Too sleepy. Too little." The Old Man, who reminded the professor of a merchant at Chin City, took a drink of water, reclined, and added: "I'm headed to Port City."

"As am I," Zei said, amused at that coincidence. "I need to meet a professor, a Karasuki."

"Karasuki," said the Old Man, startled. Then he knotted his brow. Then he paused and took another drink. "What would you be doing, looking for Karasuki?"

"He used to be an archeologist," he replied.

* * *

At the booth, a woman informed them that the guide would be late. She took their money, anyway, insisting that the man would be back at noon. She allowed them to loiter at the road, at the end of which a party waited.

Unable to do anything about the situation, they resigned to wait, tying their animals to a stump, sitting under a tree. The shade was welcome. As was the cool summer breeze that filtered through the leaves and wafted their scent.

Zei removed his hat and waved it in front of his face.

The Old Man kept watch ahead - standing, gazing - at the divide beyond the road.

That scar awaited them.... Its facade was a wasteland. Its texture was painted by the reflected shade of sunrise - twisting the spectrum from red to violet. There were sprouts of vegetation here and there. Everything about it just magnified a sense of doom came that off of it.

"Funny," the Old Man said, "why do I keep coming back to this wasteland, again and again, I always mean to avoid it."

The woman stepped out of the booth to talk with the party at the end of the road.

"You travel a lot, Old Man, if you are bored with the canyon," said Zei.

"You let that guy get away with that talk?" asked the woman.

"What?" The Old Man laughed. "I am a man and I am old. Can't be changed...."

She shook and continued with the work.

"Say ... you travelled everywhere ... remember anything like this?" Zei asked, producing the armband out of his jacket.

The Old Man took it and passed it round and round through his fingers.

"Where did you find it?" he asked.

"On an island," he answered. "In the Fire Nation."

The Old Man sighed and seemed to raise an eyebrow - then returned the item.

"It could not be Fire Nation," he concluded. "It could be Air Nomad. Yeah, it's too, too long ago to be certain - though - I spotted a symbol like that inside a temple."

"A temple?"

"A ruin."

Zei nodded. "Figures - you are right, though, the people who wore it were not Fire Nation."

* * *

It rained that night when Zei and the Old Man staggered into a tavern - an establishment that had been a favorite stop recalled by both men. Within the atmosphere was still. Without it stirred. The storm raged and rattled the shack. Only a few remained and they kept to themselves.

There, within the dark and shadow, they found a table and shared a bowl of nuts while they watched a game of Paisho.

It was a fast tournament at odds with the low key environment. The challengers stepped into the fray and again and again they left, rejected. The victor was a tea-drinking man, gray, fat, who looked familiar although due to very different reasons neither could have articulated why at that juncture.

The tea-drinking man, who did not supply a name, spoke as tiles were shuffled between games: "I am not an expert, yet, I always felt there have been a great many civilizations and that man is a species with a bout of amnesia. The world as a whole is too big, so much so that for everyone to be speaking and writing the same exact language is too great a coincidence. Yes, I thought about these coincidences from time to time," he added, the vapor of the Jasmine swirling about his face, "and I would not be surprised if there had been a world wide civilization."

"A powerful civilization," said another and older player at the table. "The Fire Nation was not the first to make advances, you know, and they were not the first to use their knowledge as a tool for conquest. Chin emerged at a point when the Earth Kingdom underwent a very rapid advance. So rapid and advanced that the King at Ba Sing Se scarcely understood what happened. A rumor went about that Chin claimed to be helped by above," he added a gesture to the sky, "and who can say yes or no, he captured just about everything until Kiyoshi put a stop to it."

The tea-drinking man nodded with approval.

The next round of play was about to start when a young man with a bandage over the eye barged into the tavern.

The tea-drinking man arose and, remorsefully, abandoned the game - stopping just to thank Zei, personally, for the discussion.

"You gave me much to think about, sir," Zei bowed, completing the gesture of appreciation.

* * *

The House of Karasuki, at Port City, was not what Zei expected it to be. 

As he ascended its narrow passage from street to hilltop, he questioned then accepted the reality of it all. The thirty-day trek. The friends who crossed into and out of his path. The continent itself seen through the eyes of a traveler and not a scientist. All of it culminated then at there at that juncture. And it was not what he thought it ought to be. But, then, he did not know what to expect anymore. Because at the end it seemed to be more about the journey than the destination.

Port City, despite its name, was more of a village than a center of commerce. Even its harbor - what remained of it after a century of war - catered the local fishing industry as opposed to trade with the world. As such the village adhered to a typical, country layout. At the south, docks at the shore, merchants at the boardwalk. North of that was the heart of trade and its arteries - a loose grid of streets and avenues - that radiated outward. Still north and toward a region dominated by a valley, the grit of downtown gave way to the luxury of uptown, with its winding, organic byways and its blanket of green. There the elite segregated. Further north and onto the foothills of mountains, civilization evaporated at last, leaving just a residue of farmland....

The estate, though, did not conform with that view of the town. It was an entirely new and different affair. Isolated at the southern and western limit. Situated at a pass within jumble of hills and valleys. Only a few at the neighborhood knew where to find its trail. Even then he feared something went awry as the pathway began to be eaten by the terrain.

He feared he took a turn and was lost within that wilderness and it was not until he caught a glimpse of the house that he calmed - although a gaze at its state left him to wonder whether to be relieved or alarmed.

The house itself sat at a hilltop, straddled between forest to the right and beach to the left.

Karasuki was a finely educated man who achieved the highest honors and privileges of his profession - a man like that should not have been so isolated.

Yet, Mako warned that Karasuki's genius gave way to madness....

Now, face to face with the abode, its stillness felt like an omen of dread. A breath of hesitation passed. Then, for better or for worse, he knocked. It was crazy. He chuckled at that break of tension the knock provided - and noted, mentally, not to utter the word ... crazy. 

Still, to think that after everything, all of that time and effort, where did that trepidation come from?

He knocked again - hard.

"Didn't I tell you to - oh," it was a woman who answered the knock. She looked quite angry until she caught a glimpse of the professor. "Oh - sorry, sir, I thought you were that creep," she explained, embarrassed, poking her head out of the doorway to look left and right.

He raised an eyebrow but refrained from inquiry.

"That's ... alright ... ma'am." He reached and took his hat off of his head. "I am Professor Zei of Ba Sing Se University. I would like to see Doctor Karasuki, if he is willing and able to see me. I was told about him by Doctor Mako, his former colleague."

The woman's eyes lit at the name Mako.

"I am sorry, professor, you came a long way." She sighed and continued: "Doctor Karasuki died about ten years ago."

Zei blinked - he clutched onto his hat as the wind was taken out of his sail.

"Nobody knew...."

"Much as he wanted it," she explained. "The last few years of his life were difficult."

He nodded and fidgeted with his hat. In the universe of possibility, any of which could have materialized at that juncture, the idea that Karasuki would be dead was not something he considered. It was quite a blow, worse, even, than an outright rejection.

"Did he leave a library or an archive? I discovered a certain artifact he would have been familiar with...."

The woman paused - and he wondered if that was the first or second time that day she related the tale.

"Regretfully, too, not to speak ill of the dead - he went quite mad at the end and destroyed everything about his work." She was very careful, very deliberate with the reply, letting the words escape through whisper. "Only another Karasuki could be able to help you and I am afraid she won't. June Karasuki. Between us - she's as insane as her grandfather."

"The only next of kin?" She nodded. He nodded. "I gather she does not live here?"

She paused, sighing. "No." She shook, displeased. "She can be found at the tavern with pirates and lowlifes."

He understood and, wearing the hat, turning, facing the trail, he heard a rustle issue out of the forest. 

Zei knew at that moment, at that instant that e had not been the only visitor to ask for Karasuki that day. And how the woman answered the knock.... Whoever that creep could have been, they came right before and he came right after. A short period of time passed between their knocking at the doorway. But the locale was so isolated.... They would have met at the trail to the abode.

"Er, ma'am, just a question - I take it somebody beat me to you. Who did you think I was?"

"Hmmm, you should have seen the creep at the trail, a Fire Nation man I don't care what he claimed to be. He can dress any way he wants, talk any way he wants, I know the truth by the eye. Those Rough Rhinos he came along with did not help his disguise."

"And did any of them have a third-eye-tattoo?"


	3. Chapter 3

Originally Published April 1, 2011

* * *

Nobody noticed that Zei entered the tavern - and he took that as a comfort.

It used to be that went into establishments like it to gather workers. Hefty sums of money always induced a steady trickle.... They were as blinded by gold as he was by discovery. Greed tended to attract a certain kind of volunteer ... they were taken without thought and they followed without question. Then, he was oblivious of the true nature of man. Now - Volcania was such a lesson - he was onto the game - payment did not garner loyalty. The journey to Port City, remarkable as it proved to be, refined that experience.

At the doorway Zei made an effort to appear calm and aloof. He stood, as patrons passed into and out of the shack, bumping left and right, while he scanned the interior. Then, not to be a sight, he shuffled toward the sanctuary offered by a corner of the bar. There, amid the safety of obscurity it provided, he studied the scene at the tavern, letting its details sink into view....

All of a sudden a crowd materialized about a table at the center of activity.

Zei leaned onto the counter. When the keep appeared he pointed at a bottle of rum and asked a shot of it. A coin left was exchanged and established a minor note of credit. With a sip he felt at easy, already, as if he belonged. Relaxed, a loosened a bit, he continued to inspect that action within the joint.

It was the table - the eyes could not be taken off of it. 

A tiny, square table, lit by a chained halo of light, which swung to and fro above as folk tended their business below. 

At the front end of the diagonal sat a man. He could have been a pirate with that attire. The ruffian grabbed at a glass filled to the edge with tonic. With a hand that jerked unsteady, he shook, stared, stared, then gulped the alcohol so fast he almost swallowed the glass too.

Zei held onto his shot as he sat and watched, trying to blend into the crowd even as he wore his white field attire. 

The crowd around the table went wild. Shouting surged, drowning the already obscene level of conversation that echoed throughout the establishment. Money, too, surged as bets passed from hand to hand. Then, immediately, the mob froze.... They were paralyzed by the other, seated figure....

At the back end of the diagonal the opponent of the pirate reached to a shot of tonic that was just poured into a glass.

At that vantage, with its back to Zei's front, the figure was simply an outline yet it was enough to dominate the event.

He saw the hand grasp the shotglass - its fingers ashen, nails onyx. He saw the arm raise the shotglass - its form wrapped by leather. He saw the face - and everything vanished as the breath was taken out of his lungs.

It was June - he did not doubt the description of the housekeeper....

A shock was stirred, perhaps, impelled by what he had been told about that woman. The grandfather's eccentricity was alive and well with the granddaughter - although he could not say if it was that madness.... Then the shock gave way to awe whose source seemed to be as mysterious and enigmatic as June. It was just something ... something about that woman that would have set her above and apart, distinguished among any sort of company. Everything and its totality revealed a potent force of nature.

Zei walked in front of the Old Man - who kept polishing a white lotus tile.

A knowing if subtle nod passed from man to man.

It was not a surprise that the challenger, an unfortunate victim of circumstance, had to be carried away from the table. It was the most, the best that could be hoped at after crossing that woman. Whatever the aim of the contest was it simply did not matter as its outcome was predetermined. June was the kind of woman who conquered a room just by entering it.

She sat as he approached. That poise - its silent language of gesture - it was such a barrier. He did not know how to overcome it. If, indeed, it could be breached.

He could not delay the encounter - to solve the mystery for which he travelled far and wide he needed to meet the last of the Karasuki.

As he came at the table he felt detached. It was as though he prepared in case of another failure. It was, simply, the best way to deal with the situation. If the housekeeper was to be believed, then he faced a steep, steep climb....

"I'd buy you a drink but you hold the bottle," he uttered, a quick and dirty observation, as he slumped into a chair by the woman. Already he regretted those exact words. There had to be a thousand other ways to start a conversation.

She gazed with a single, raised eye as an attendant took the refuse off of the table. Neither way inclined, she met his awkward attempt to break the ice with her own unique mix of annoyance and indifference. Then she sighed when she realized the guy was not going away....

"And what do you possibly want of me, doc?" June asked more at her drink than at the professor.

"Quite a lot actually," Zei replied, "as you are the only person able to help me." He settled into the seat; the Old Man gave a thumbs up gesture and returned to the polishing. "I know you're a bounty hunter.... And a bit of a mercenary. But there was a time when you pursued a more academic aim. Since your grandfather, Doctor Karasuki, is not with us, you are the only person...."

"Well, didn't you do your homework, doc," she exclaimed, slamming the bottle against the table. "And what if I don't wanna help you and your more academic aim?"

"It's Zei," he stated, leaning and swirling the rum within his shot. "Ba Sing Se University will pay you for your services."

"Unlikely, if you're coming to me to ask what I think you're going to ask about grandpa." The attendant refilled her glass with a tonic. "Long Feng asking where the money went ought to keep that arrangement from happening."

"There are other sources, other means, just as lucrative and at my disposal." He tabled his drink and looked at the bounty hunter. "I don't think money is why you're going to help me."

"Oh?" She stirred her drink and smiled at the archeologist, anticipating the laugh to be. "So ... not about money, is it?"

"A discovery bound to change the history of the world." He grasped at the edge of the table, smiling, nodding as just the thought of investigation came to mind. "Don't you find that knowledge is worth more than gold?"

June leaned into Zei and laughed.

"Grandpa warned me about you ... the explorer ... the discoverer ... driven by that thrill. You're getting yourself into a downfall. A blind and stupid downfall. You don't even realize it. You'd race all over the world, up and down this world, to get nothing at the end. You all," she stirred then sipped the tonic, "you all, all of you, your degrees and letters and you don't have a lick of sense."

He dug into a pocket and fumbled with its content. 

It was a last ditch effort, to be certain, he just could not face a defeat like that twice. But, while he had been resigned to failure, a fire was stoked by the fact that it had not been (yet) an embarrassment. And maybe ... maybe the situation could be salvaged. 

Zei produced the armband - at length - he dropped it and spread it atop the table to reveal its insignia.

June stopped its unfurling, slamming her hand onto his hand, betraying a swell of discomfort.

"I found it and many other artifacts on an island in the Fire Nation where there was plenty of the Riyu and the Meiguo - the kind that your grandfather...."

"Where did you find it, where, where, where exactly?"

She hid the crooked, bent cross beneath a fold.

He leaned to avoid the eavesdrop of the audience and slipped that name: "Volcania."

"You don't know what a stupid, stupid thing you've done," the mercenary crumpled that armband into a ball and shoved it at the professor, barking: "Get that off of the table - damn it - it still means something to a bunch of wackos."

He blinked at the revelation - then yanked and stuffed the armband into his jacket.

"You know what it is.... I saved that and two other artifacts from that location. I trust you know what I mean when I say I found the tunnels and the station...."

Aroused, she spoke through a whisper: "Impossible ... that armband or anything with the Meiguo ... was not found at that island." June leaned into Zei, yanking at his jacket, continuing that whisper: "The Fire Nation is where you find a lot of the Riyu and maybe traces of the Meiguo. You don't find items like that armband and there wasn't any thing like any of that when Tenzin uncovered the site."

"I realize it." He put his hands on her hands - she did not fight it nor release her hold. He continued with that subdued tone of voice: "Others found Volcania after Tenzin. Still, there is uncertainty about this matter, as the Dai Li censored the journal. Are you absolutely certain, absolutely certain that what I showed you is not connected to the site?"

"I accessed a copy of the diary, uncensored." June released Zei and turned her attention onto her drink. "There should be no connection between the island and the madmen who carry that emblem. Damn it - how did they learn about the site? I should have known. After they.... Bet your ass and my ass the Fire Nation knows about it too. Damn it - the secret of Volcania was safe. Locked behind the walls of Ba Sing Se where the Fire Nation never would have found it."

"When I got there I found the remains of soldiers who were certainly not a part of the station. Their remains were recent - between ten to twenty years ago. They came to the island, used it as a kind of base, until an eruption forced them to abandon it. They left a lot behind, though, a lot."

"Doc." She spoke the word and it was as if his pulse raced. Her eyes came alive and just like that he wished he faced that volcano instead. "Doc, if you're anything as smart as you think you are, you'd destroy that armband and everything you found, and you'd forget about that island. Forget about long lost civilizations. Forget about extinct alphabets and language. If you knew what it meant, what it really, really was about, what that island held and how dangerous it is in anybody's hands - especially their hands - you'd crawl back into a cave and never come out it. We live on a tiny little island. In a vast ocean of darkness and shadow. And it was not meant that we travel far...."

The doorway burst with a flood of light then step by step a singular, wide, tall shape emerged through that fog of daylight. It hovered, large and formless, onto the table they shared. A gasp worked its way out of the patrons like a wave echoing back and forth through the tavern. They murmured, their anger turning into fear, at the intrusion.

Zei covered his face with his hands. Although the sunlight blinded the eyes, peeking through the slits of his fingers, he eked a vision of the intruder. A brute - a tall, burly monster.

June uttered a 'not you again' groan as the figure stepped fully into the tavern.

As that shape lurched into the structure, Zei saw the full naked face, and stood just as that third-eye-tattoo knotted. He took a glass filled with tonic and flung it at Fen. He saw that face contort into a grimace of annoyance as the alcohol burned the eyes.

June stood and unfurled her whip, lashing it against the doorway, where a mob of other fiery agents attempted to enter.

The Old Man rushed into their aid. With a flick of the wrist he bent the table upward, toward the space between them and the intruder. It formed an upright if thin barrier.

"Ain't nothing like a good set of reflexes," June said then asked of the spry old man: "that guy's a friend of yours?"

Blinded, not stopped, the ogre's tattoo sparkled and a little arc of lightning zigzagged out of the brow - they uttered a cry of fear.

"Fen - a Fire Nation agent," Zei said aloud.

"Eh, live and learn, doc," June quipped.

The patrons, afraid of the possibility of a lightning fueled riot, poured into the doorway, trapping Fen within and keeping the others without.

"Come with me," the Old Man got between Zei and June, tugging at their arms. "There's an exit at the rear."

They followed their guide through the throngs onto the end of the tavern.

June tightened her whip while Zei pounded at the wall. Then came the sound of the table getting ripped and torn to shreds. Then came a blast of fire, crashing and sizzling against the rock of the wall. The Old Man swiped his hand in front of his face and a crack formed along the wall. It lengthened and widened just enough to admit them into the daylight. Another gesture as they were through and the crack was shut.

"You carry your own exit hole, sweet, always knew that would be useful," June said. "Got a ride out of town, stranger?"

"Ostrich-horses, at the front of the tavern," said Zei.

The three snuck around from the back to the front side of the establishment.

"I trust you met the housekeeper," she said, dryly.

"Kikyo? Yes - lovely, lovely woman," he replied, breathlessly.

Panic arose out of the street as Fen fired, randomly, into the crowd.

"We need to get to the beachfront, doc."

"Let me start a distraction...."

The Old Man ran into the street where the gang of firebenders were gathered at the entry to the tavern. June and Zei followed - Zei holding onto his hat, June unwrapping her whip. They watched the Old Man raise the dust off of the road and blow it onto the invaders. Suspended, it formed a fog, and everything it seemed turned into a thick, swirling yellow cloud filled with coughing lungs and watery eyes.

June shook her head in subdued though appreciative awe: "Eh, that guy is serious business."

The Old Man turned toward the youths: "Quick, it's not forever!"

The animals had been tethered at the front of the tavern and awaited their riders.

He got onto his stead while Zei and June shared another. June latched onto Zei at the waist and stated: "To the beach - it's the safest and fastest way to get home."

Zei nodded and galloped south, south west. 

They reached the limit of Port City as the ruckus at the tavern spread into a riot - a sea of stirred, irate earthbenders poured into the streets to battle the invaders and stopped Fen and his agents far, far more effectively than what the Old Man was able to.

"I got to say, doc, we know how to start a riot."

It would not be long until the firebenders realized their targets escaped and that revelation would have impelled them to retreat to catch them at their hideout - the only other place they could have gone to - the House of Karasuki.

"Did you meet Kuzon?" Zei asked. "Bald. Bearded. A funny accent."

"Hmmm, yeah, he wanted to know what grandpa discovered about the Meiguo," June replied. "Brought me a sample of the Meiguo he uncovered - would not say where - figured from deep inside of the Earth Kingdom."

"You didn't happen to save any of it - what he showed you?"

"None," the bounty hunter explained, "after I told him to shove it."

"Yeah," the archeologist mused with a smile, "you certainly got a way with people."

"Damn straight, doc...."

"So why are we going back to that house?"

At the westside of the cove there was a thin, round peninsula jetting into the water. Going up and around its edifice, they encountered where the shore gave way from rock to sand. It was a placid arc of beach, a very light ochre that their ostrich-horses found somewhat troublesome to navigate.

June indicated to a hilltop that emerged through the forest - it was the house just within reach.

They rested at the edge between beach and forest where the abode loomed overhead.

"It's not the house, itself, exactly," she replied.

Jumping off of the saddle, June and Zei sneaked into the wilderness, a region enshadowed by mountain.

The Old Man was left behind to provide a watch.

"Grandpa worked at a hut," she said, letting a bit of fondness slip through her tone of voice. "He loved to be by the water."

The forest was thick after years and years of neglect - the sounds of its denizens, stirred by their intrusion, enveloped them as they punched through a trail deeper and deeper into its obscurity.

"He'll ransack the house and not find anything of value. He'll think all of grandpa's work was lost and leave it at that. Well - OK, not likely - Kuzon's an idiot but he's not dumb. Doc, if you think any of us are obsessed, we've got nothing on them or their dedication."

"Fire Nation?"

She chortled, almost snorted.

"Yeah, Fire Nation, doc...."

June parted what looked to be a drape of leaves. Behind that entwined wall of green was a doorway. The overgrowth was not accidental - the trees, the shrubs - the lay of the land itself was intended to mask the structure within Nature.

"They would have found the cabin eventually," she said of it at last. "Grandpa destroyed a lot of his work - but - not everything, not everything. He could not bring himself to go that far. Said that's what separated a civilized man from whatever savagery they were. What he could not part with he kept at the cabin."

"We need to destroy it?" he asked.

She nodded - then paused to sigh. 

They kicked at the doorway and it collapsed as a pile of rubbish. 

June reached into the entrance and palmed about the frame of the doorway inside of the cabin. She found whatever it was she searched - a switch - and flipped it. There came a hum and the structure shook. Then - a kind of illumination flickered out of the tubes attached at the ceiling.

Zei stood agape - it was that technology, sampled at Volcania, restored by to its glory. But where had Karasuki gathered enough of it? And how was it repaired?

"Like I said, he could not bring himself to destroy all of it." June dragged Zei into the shack where they looked about its contents. 

Ravaged through years of neglect, the interior displayed various states of decay. The wood was warped at the floor where it flooded from time to time. The windows were smashed where vegetation grew into them. Even the fixtures, scavenged through years of archeology, were accumulating a state of disrepair rivaling the remainder of the hut. 

"What a mess...." 

A universe of animals worked inside through its gaps where they lived and died everywhere.

She had to be honest, a lot of the decay was due to neglect. She just could not enter that shack after Karasuki died. She simply denied then forgot its existence. Now - she shed a tear thought she vowed not to cry in front of a stranger - the idea that she would be the destroyer of that remnant proved to be too much to bear.... Until she found that resolve....

"We need to destroy what Kuzon found - and, if not, what Kuzon wants to do." Talking, any kind of talking, took the edge out of the work. "The advantage we possess is that ... he does not understand ... he does not know ... anything about what he discovered. Strange, as Kuzon is Na'Cui."

Zei explored while June searched and talked.

The hut was a single, cramped office with a closet at its side. A desk at the center was flipped - its frame rotted, its drawer filled with water, its interior a home to ants. A chair at the corner was loaded by boxes. A stack of shelves at either side of the chair and desk were filled with volumes the bulk of which were turned into pulp. The artifacts were not written with the language they knew....

"Although - it would not be out of character - when he learned about the Na'Cui he told me there was a spectrum of knowledge they possessed about themselves," she continued. "Grandpa thought there were different generations of different tribes of Na'Cui. All of which were cut-off from wherever they originated. The early versions were full blooded Na'Cui. The later versions where Na'Cui enough to know their language and customs but not enough to understand it. Then there was a new type of Na'Cui altogether that they were creating, like that boom-boom combustion man, wow, they have been working forever to make a type like that. Even before they knew about the Avatar."

"Fen, you mean, I hired that guy to work at the island," he confessed, "it must be where Kuzon got the loot he showed you."

There was a large, gray metal case with a dial, its symbols written with the Meiguo. She bent over it, turning its knob this way and that way, aiming at what was a series of symbols. She engaged a pair of handles at either end of the dial then she grabbed and pulled. The top and everything attached to it came off of bottom. It revealed a pair of sacks.

"You grab the left, I grab the right," she ordered.

"Amazing," he stammered, "all of it."

June pressed a button at the tip of a bell - wires, entwined like a braid, slithered out of the object into a wall.

"That'll warn the housekeeper ... now," she reached into the closet, flipped a switch. He caught a glimpse of it - a dial that glowed a dusky shade of orange at the base of a tub that looked like it came out of a Fire Nation ship. "Now, we need to go!"

A rumble - like the sound of fire - groaned out of the shack.

Despite the terrain, and the heft of the loot, the professor and the mercenary fled.

The beach was quiet except where surf crashed onto its coast. The Old Man gestured that they keep low and quiet. As they climbed aboard the saddle it was obvious why they needed to be cautious. There was already a commotion at the House of Karasuki.

"Catch," June said, flinging a sack at the Old Man. "Follow the beach north, north west."

They sped away as explosions and fireworks erupted out of the wilderness.

* * *

It was evening and the falling, dying sun filtered its rays through the valley. A sweet scent of bloom filled the air, wafting about the ruins. The remains of San Mei, which spread about the slope of a mountain, was overgrown with weeds and populated by critters. Everything that lived within that valley, it seemed, found a refuge amidst its nooks and crannies.

"The Golden Pavilion of San Mei," June explained, "an outpost of the lost Air Nomads."

"I recall that name - it appeared from time to time at the archives," Zei commented. "I did not think I would be allowed to see it."

Seated, the bounty hunter reached into a sack and removed a small, curious box. Within it were trinkets used by survivalists. The archeologist recognized the flint - as it was a standard excavation tool. Cued, he scavenged debris for wood and when that proved inadequate he collected strips of yellowed, dry vines. He gathered that fuel into a pile and started the fire. Meanwhile the Old Man tended to the ostrich-horses.

"It was grandpa's other favorite site," she added, "he loved it so much so that he moved to Port City just to be by it."

"He was a bit of a rebel," he inferred of Karasuki. "The Dai Li discourage us from studying the Air Nomads in detail." He took off his hat and lay it by the sacks they saved. "Especially their outposts as they fear it'll force us to talk about the war."

She sighed and let her whip drop onto the ground - where it unwound a tad as it settled between the sacks, beside the hat.

"What a life," she mused aloud, "I guess history ended with Sozin's Comet."

June paused to study Zei. It had to be the only instance the woman saw the man without that hat since the start of their adventure. She did not want to entertain the thought of it, yet, it was hard to dismiss the fact that he was quite a handsome catch. He was very much like the youths with who she attended class. There was an air of intellect about the face - she pictured him with his head in a book, surrounded by stacks and stacks of books. 

All the knowledge of the world was worthless without a basic common sense to ground it.

"Ba Sing Se." She leaned onto a block of stone - withered, aged - where it landed after it dropped. "I remember it, way, way, back - it was the worst city, ever. Grandpa took us away and forbade us to return. Yeah, he hated that city as much as what he discovered."

The Old Man napped at a corner while June and Zei warmed themselves at the fire. At the other end of the atrium the ostrich-horses ate flower scented shoots where they roosted. The ruin occupied what used to be a major tea growing region and despite the abandonment - and the squalor it fell into - there was still a ghost like passing scent of jasmine to remind everyone that the past was just as real, just as actual as the future....

She took the sacks and spread their contents across the ground.

"Grandpa destroyed everything except what he kept inside of those sacks." Splayed in front of the fire were notebooks, journals, inventories - and trinkets with other curious artifacts. There were also unfolded silk maps and an armband like the type discovered at Volcania. Zei flung his onto the pile. June moved hers into its vicinity. They were identical except for the obvious signs of age. "The madness that fell my grandfather. I guess ... it started after we translated the Riyu. Yes," she sighed while he gazed, enrapt, "I was a student at that time."

"I gathered as much," he said, adding his glasses to his eyes. "It's hard to hide a head full of knowledge."

She gave a smirk - it was not straightforward, how to read that man. He was not the sort of figure she dealt with day to day. A little voice told her he was not adept at courting a woman - certainly - as indicated by the awkward way he approached a conversation at the tavern. Yet, that smooth way he complimented, was too much like the kind of pass an academic would have used.

"A man of your profession, knee-deep in the dead of civilization, ought to know that knowledge and wisdom are not identical. After all - there's a reason why they're extinct - anyway ... we figured out it was a variant of the language we speak."

"A variant?" Zei rubbed his chin as he thought, "we suspected the Riyu was an earlier form, a devolved form, you suggest they developed at the same time? Or that the Riyu came after and the language came before?"

"You'd think it would be ancient like that," she replied. "It's not seen and used in the preset, only in the past." June unfurled a few maps and set them in front of the man. "It's not, exactly, true. As it was revealed, the Riyu is younger than the language. There's just something funny about the way time and place are at work. Actually, the Riyu is a little advanced. It's not a single system of writing but a triad." Zei raised an eyebrow as he looked at the woman while thumbing through the maps left and right. "Three separate writing systems used interchangeably within the texts. We deciphered two out of three - enough to gauge the meaning. Later, when we looked at artifacts like those maps," she pointed to what he studied, "we finally disentangled the Meiguo."

"Amazing.... What could have happened that stopped the spread of the Riyu?"

June, as if to answer, took the map Zei rescued out of Volcania and spread it over the rest of the atlas which remained scattered about the ground. It was set beside what had to be the landscape of an alien world. The older, larger map that the bounty hunter carried showed a configuration of land and sea that baffled the archeologist. There were two halves, more or less, the left half smaller than the right half. The left half showed a mass divided into a northern and southern set of portions with a pair of seas and an archipelago between. The right half showed a conjunction of three masses. A separate island continent adorned the south, south eastern portion. Even larger and far-flung archipelagos were spread about that area as well. Then, at the very bottom of that atlas, was a patch of white which bore a familiarity with the map he saved. Indeed, he traced the cast of his map and her map and identified just what it was supposed to be.

"And I thought it was only an island," he exclaimed with a bit of excitement. "But it's a polar island continent. Like the South Pole."

"Not like, doc, is - that is the South Pole as it was like in the days before the cataclysm."

"Cataclysm?"

"It's the event that destroyed what you see," she explained, pointing at the atlas and at another modern map. "The world before and after the cataclysm. This is what spurred the Migration, as well as other changes to man." June shifted toward Zei and pointed to a fact that had not been discussed yet. "See ... the writing at the atlas ... it's the Riyu and the Meiguo - side by side."

At last it was obvious, the simplicity of it all.

"That's how you cracked it ... different languages, same idea."

"Yes - and what we learned - the Meiguo, it's a completely different basis of writing. It's an alphabet based on sound instead of syllable and ideograph. By the way, those figures written at the lines of the maps, they are numbers. A system of ten to be exact." 

"Incredible...."

Looking up, their eyes met a moment.

"It wasn't too hard to guess, doc, although it took years to figure out just how the Meiguo worked. And it wasn't just the pronunciation - which was straightforward when we matched sound to symbol - the way to extract the meaning of the word was a major, major problem. We worked at that for years and at the end it was not a hundred per cent accurate." She smirked and shook a fist at the ground. "We realized another problem - the Meiguo was a name that had been given to a group of often very different languages. That fact emerged when we studied the geographical distribution of the Meiguo. Sometimes the variations were subtle as the languages were related. Sometimes the difference were just too striking and we concluded they were entirely different languages."

They uncovered a map that Karasuki created as a student - it showed the two versions of the world, pre and post cataclysm, and detailed with comments all of the changes that happened. Most of the land vanished. Either it sank into the ocean or it shifted, shattered often disintegrated with landslide.

"Cataclysm." He removed his glasses to rub his eyes. "What about the theory of Tenzin, that there had been ancient global civilizations that used the Riyu and the Meiguo?"

"Yeah, the two ancient languages and the one modern language, all existed together before and after the cataclysm. Yet there was no single empire that ruled the world. Each of these, divisions," she said of the original pre-event map, "represented a nation, with its own variation of language and alphabet. Although there was no single empire there were a handful of nations that competed with each other to influence the world. There were three, to be exact, and they dominated politically, socially, economically, and they were represented by the language of today, the Riyu, the Meiguo."

"Alright.... What about the armbands? What were the Na'Cui - and were they connected to the cataclysm?"

June sighed - she shook and took a breath. It had been ages since she and her family gathered the details and throughout that time, from then to now, they kept that knowledge a secret. It was heretical, to say the last about it, and just not something that would be accepted, easily, especially by the powers that be at Ba Sing Se. How could they be asked to accept that all of what they knew was neither the first nor the best age of man? Was it any wonder her grandfather went mad?

The fire crackled - it sent silhouettes of the two, man and woman, projected against the wall where they gained a kind of life unbeknownst to them. The flickering of the flames alternated and brought the shapes into and out of focus. They swayed, growing bigger then smaller, and danced about to the rhythm traced by the wind swept fire. The shapes, trapped and helpless, served a strange kind of microcosm of life and the history of man.

"The past - you think it should be dead." She gathered the armbands. She hesitated, then and there, verging on the act of tossing them into the flame. "As far as I know, the Na'Cui and the cataclysm are not linked. Before the old world ended and the new world began there was a war, not unlike the war of today, they who wore the armbands - the Na'Cui - were like the Fire Nation. They were monsters, doc, they developed and advanced technologies that were out of this world and used it to serve their war - just like the pattern of Chin and Sozin. They were defeated - or - at least they wanted the world to think they were defeated. The truth would be that their evil continued both in spirit and in fact. In spirit because their technology continued to vex man after their demise - the victors adopted the Na'Cui's science and used it against each other. In fact because they are with us, living with us ... they're supposed to be a relic of antiquity, a defeated atrocity, yet they continued into the here and now.... History, doc, is just one long march to war. And not a whole lot else that amounts to much."

Zei shook as he rubbed his chin.

June sipped a mug of tea that had been warmed atop the fire.

There was something she said that stirred a recollection, something he heard about the war, something along the way to Port City.

"Yes," he said aloud, "you said their technology was out of this world," he started, raising and wagging a finger as if in lecture. "Could it be that they were helped? The Fire Nation went through a period of advancement. Chin, the Conqueror, advanced above and beyond the knowhow of his era. Before any of them, there's evidence enough to show the rise and fall of a thousand kingdoms. If the Na'Cui have been in existence throughout all of that time, then, do you supposed, they helped the others? By giving them knowledge?"

"Well - like I said - knowledge is not wisdom. If you mix crazy tribal mentality with technology from beyond this time and place, you're guaranteed something's going to hurt. Maybe it was no coincidence that we were given the Avatar after the cataclysm? There was no Avatar or bending in the days before the cataclysm."

"The Avatar is supposed to keep the balance of the world; time and time again the Avatar stopped their plot; so ... the Avatar ... had to be taken out."

"Hmmm, the Na'Cui were into genocide, it was part of their racial purity nonsense. You've seen Fen. You've seen their handiwork. The Master Race. They're still around, looking for clues to recreate and restore themselves...."

"I recall something that Kuzon said at the island - when I got captured. He came along with a tribe of ancient sun worshipers; said they had been chosen to be their seed, something, something, a perfect prototype of a perfect race."

"The Na'Cui were obsessed with creating what they called the Master Race. We never figured out who or what that they could have meant. Just too much information was lost. What we found, though, it would have made sense if they said the Master Race came from space."

"All of that happened, what, hundreds of thousands of years ago?" He looked at the hand drawn map, showing the before and after picture, tapping a finger on it. "Between then and now how are the Na'Cui able to exist? Even if they survived the cataclysm, they were a defeated enemy that left the stage and should have been long, long extinct."

June looked into the steam coming out of the tea.

As their ability to read and understand the Meiguo expanded, their attention turned to investigate history. When it came to the Na'Cui there were a trove of rumors and conspiracies. There were too many ideas that floated about that group, all of which were too incredible to discuss. The truth itself, as they uncovered, what too strange for anybody to accept.

"It is hard to say, exactly, how they do it. Grandpa thought about it a lot, especially at Omashu, where they surfaced. The problem about how they persist is complex especially as they seem to be too small a number at any given time. What bothered everyone, though, was how they all shared the same, exact mission yet their knowledge about themselves varied. It was like a paradox. Those who were able to blend into the world, they tended to be the most ignorant about their history. Those who were knowledgeable about their history, they tended to be unable to fit into the world. The first were what you expect if a small number of people assimilated. The second - just seemed like they stepped out of antiquity - they knew next to nothing about anything, they spoke with accents, they were illiterate."

"So," Zei started to hypothesize, "it's as if there's a source, of Na'Cui, who know who and what they are and how to live as Na'Cui, they are truly isolated and live as their ancestors. Every so often they 'release' a handful of families that then go out in the world and establish themselves. They end up blending in more and more yet enough of their history remains from generation to generation that they still exert influence and direct history." It was then and there that his eyes widened as details, subtle and unexplained, of what she related came into focus. "June! Did Karasuki interact, directly, with the Na'Cui?"

June did not answer - only shivered.

By that silence a chill went through his body.

"Do we know what they're after?"

At the wake of the cataclysm - what, exactly, that had been was not plain to Zei as June did not say - much of the world was rearranged. The remnant of the Na'Cui should have been killed off. A comparison of the old and new versions of Earth showed that the South Pole remained more or less intact - deformed yet intact. If there had been a cache of equipment - as there had been in Volcania - the best place to look would have been where the geography remained unchanged.

"A Fire Nation ship doesn't just exist. Its parts must be manufactured and assembled - you need factories and workers trained to do that. Metal. Fuel. You need a mine and another set of labor to use that. It's a vast web of activity involved just to create then to maintain a ship. That's got to be true about everything created by a civilization. These Na'Cui, they want to rule the world, they want to use that technology yet that network they need does not exist anymore. Indeed, despite that technology, they lack the ability to employ it. If we assume that only bits and pieces of the past remain then those fragments are not enough to sustain their plan - else - they would have triumphed already. They are forced to rely on what's survived or what's engineered by their puppets.... Let's suppose that there was or could have been a cache of ancient, pre-cataclysm artifacts - maybe a stronghold that belong to a world-power - maybe they could be looking for a place like that? "

June nodded.

"Yes, it follows, Kuzon wanted to talk about a site grandpa discovered - a graveyard of the gods - it was part of the information we destroyed. Like Volcania ... the site contained an ore that affected the earthbenders and prevented an excavation. Not too much was written about that location."

"Let's suppose that they're in a frenzy to rebuild. They know that victory is assured. They got close to it with Chin the Conqueror and don't want to taste defeat again. That ore is how they plan to win."

There was a pause through which they gazed at the fire - it crackled while the tea was drunk and its leaves were put into that pit to smoke. 

He wanted to say something - yet - at that point he was out of ideas. The truth was that it was a bit much and if he had not lived through the events he survived he would not have believed any of it. An ancient army of genocidal, fanatic madmen, active though hidden, plotting world domination as if from beyond the grave of history. A cache of technology just sitting and waiting to be ransacked. And a bunch of modern-day true-believers acting on orders to bring about the end of the world as they knew it.

"Archeology is my world, June, I'm not an adventurer or a hero."

"Don't look at me, doc, I'm in it for the money."

Zei allowed a smile.

June sighed, her eyes fixed at the stars....

"I heard something about funding"


	4. Chapter 4

Originally Published April 1, 2011

* * *

Except the archive of Ba Sing Se - censored by the Dai Li - only the library of Omashu contained (extant) volumes of Tenzin's and Karasuki's work.

Bumi, the King of Omashu, was said to know the Avatar as a child. He kept a belief that the boy could be found alive ... and to that end he employed a team willing to search far and wide. A powerful though eccentric earthbender, he also joined the hunt from time to time, where he met Karasuki at the field. The archeologist became a favorite of the king and thereafter taught at the University of Omashu.

June assured Zei that several, important volumes of research - little of which she was familiar with - could be found there.

"I remember that city very, very fondly," she said. "Bumi hired all kinds of ruffians - especially bounty hunters - god, how I wanted to run away with them. He is not sane," she added, flatly, "still, he was the only other person grandpa trusted, he is the only other anybody who understands what we know. Actually, he knows a lot more than anybody still alive...."

"Figures," he said. "At a hundred and ten years old, all of that surrounded b a swarm of investigators.... Do you think he knows about the Graveyard?"

"It's hard to say, doc, we got to try anyway. We got to figure that, with everything destroyed at Port City, Kuzon's going to ransack grandpa's old haunts one by one. From the softest to hardest targets." She angled her head backward toward his face. "I know I would be."

"Kuzon cannot get into Omashu. Bumi's making it harder and harder to enter that city," said the Old Man as he galloped along with June and Zei.

"Kuzon," she paused to consider it.... "Kuzon won't try to enter Omashu. It would be a waste of effort and put everything into jeopardy. The Na'Cui prefer the covert not the overt anyway. And he doesn't know jacksquat about archeology - he's a soldier not a scholar - the rest of them at that outfit won't strike anybody as intellectual. We, however, stand a better chance of getting into the city and we know where and what to look for inside. Kuzon ... he'll opt to wait and watch us."

June, at the front of the saddle, tightened the reign. Zei, at the back of the saddle, studied the map. The Old Man, with their sack of loot, kept up with the pace of travel.

They followed a trail etched through thick, coarse grass. The road was not too wide, not too thin, just enough to allow two way traffic. It was flat while the terrain at its edges retained its character untouched - hills rising to cliffs rising to mountains. As they neared a ridge they saw a pass carved into its rock - an archway, like a portal, half in and out of rubble. It was the entry of a passage to Omashu and the sight of it awoke a memory about the city.

"Omashu, the city of tragic love, doomed love, there was a song about it," Zei said.

"Yeah, Oma and Shu, the very first earthbenders, as that legend goes," June said.

"Did you visit their cave?"

The woman blushed at the implication of it.

"No ... although my dad uncovered their tomb - romantic - in a death kind of way."

The man laughed that thought.

"Death - it's got to be that ultimate expression of love ... antiquity is filled with a thousand monuments built to remember love felled by death. The untimely death lovers. The cursed fate lovers. The warring faction lovers. Like Oma and Shu. A story like that, it made them immortal ... archetypes. Tragic but then they never need to face the ugly side of life either - growing apart and everything like that."

She chuckled. He looked askance.

"Love's gone bad for, ya, doc?"

"Can't say.... Can't say I was struck by love before."

"Nah ... that's what you want to think - it has, though, it has. Yeah, you're going to end surrounded by your one true love, dirt ... and relics ... but dirt. Lots of dirt. Maybe a book? Hmmm, the tragedy will be that you won't understand the tragedy of it all."

"I got to say I like it. Always wanted to be a part of history," he mused then asked: "And what about you?"

She replied: "I don't know and I don't care where I go, doc, just as long as a kid with a brush doesn't uncover my bones after a thousand years."

"A shame - I bet you'd leave really nice bones too."

"Oh, my, god, do not tell me that's what archeologist say...."

With a gust of air her hair flew into his face.

He waited a second, then a breath after a breath, then only quite reluctantly acted. Reaching his face. Brushing her hair. He could not say why he waited - a hope the air would have wiped it away? a fear of contact? an effort not to embarrass? Truth was he would not have minded it, except, it interfered with his reading of the map.

"Well, I intend to be discovered, discovered surrounded by a most spectacular location - I want people to wonder who I was and what I could have been doing...."

"All this talk of death and bones makes me long for the subject of the Na'Cui," said the Old Man.

They quieted, ending their conversation with a pair of smirks.

Zei focused onto the map of the pre-cataclysmic antarctic region. It was marked by a variant of the Meiguo always connected to the Na'Cui, yet, it could not be deciphered.... Worse, as that part of Earth was not inhabited at that era, its sites did not correspond with any other map and did not match with Southern Water Tribe settlement. The existence and utility of those sites, whatever they might have been, were secret known only to the Na'Cui.

"And speaking of Na'Cui - any chance they still could be at the antarctic?"

* * *

As a typical ancient Earth Kingdom city, Omashu grew out of a mountain. Through its construction, its organic patterns of settlement - that spiraled upward, toward the peak - that mountain was reshaped into a cone. Ducts, like arteries and veins, transported food and water from sector to sector - an early example of technology that would be perfected at Ba Sing Se.

The city was famous and a very sturdy fortress against an attack. There were always trails of migrants eager to seek a refuge no matter how difficult the sovereign made it to enter. Yet, as they approached the gate, the displaced could not be seen. It was a cause of concern they did not anticipate as the more they stood out of the ordinary, the less likely they would be to enter.... If they were surrounded by a throng then they could have worked that cover to worm into the city; alone, however, all of their peculiarities were magnified beyond reason.

Zei got off of the ostrich-horse - they approached a guard already aware of their advance - all the while the wind stirred the sand about them.

"Hello," the professor said as the air flapped his jacket and his hat - that, until he grasped it, little by little threatened to fly away. "You look like the man in charge of the gate."

"That would be correct," the guard said with a voice that defied the stir. "I am the gatekeeper. Who are you? What do you want at Omashu?"

"Professor Zei, archeology," he bowed, "Professor Karasuki, er," she bowed, "we are from Ba Sing Se University." He pointed at the Old Man: "and that is Qi, our assistant. We need to access a library to pursue a certain academic matter."

A pair of guards at either side of the gatekeeper retreated into a hut just as the wind calmed.

"Do you have any papers," the guard/gatekeeper asked, "any documents?"

June lurched toward Zei, brushing her hair off of her face.

"Only a request to the sovereign - a King who is a known patron of science - that we could be allowed to examine the library at the university. It contains information pertinent to an investigation we are conducting. Karasuki's grandfather was an employee of your monarch and that is easily verified."

The other two guards marched out of the hut by the gate. They came up to the gatekeeper with a scroll. The visitors waited patient but curious at that development. Finally, the commander looked at the man, at the woman, at the Old Man atop an ostrich-horse, a mumbled a phrase that could not be heard. While he maneuvered through that group a troop appeared and surrounded everybody.

"Archeology?!" he said more than asked, amused. "And what sort of doctor are you, er, Karasuki?"

"Eschatology."

The guard/gatekeeper laughed and straightened - and displayed the scrolls - they were posters....

June got off of the saddle and strode toward the commander - the troop backed a step until bows and arrows were displayed.

"It must be a mistake," Zei said of their own wanted posters.

"Not a mistake, professor, you two are spies of the Fire Nation."

"What?" June yanked the paper - the men shocked, quivered. The bounty hunter laughed at her image and her litany of talent the document depicted. "Kuzon!"

As the soldiers neared, their arms aimed to strike, Zei turned to June as a kind of two person huddle.

"Wait," he said, "it could be the ticket into Omashu." He faced the commander and asked: "I take it you need to arrest us?"

* * *

"Eh, what a plan, doc, what a tight and cozy cell you unearthed. Got any other ideas?" The woman sighed - she rattled the corner of the cage as a pair of soldiers sifted through their sacks. "Careful with that stuff, Neanderthals, they belong in a museum!"

"What was it she called us?" whispered the first to the second soldier, as they gazed bewildered at the maps and the trinkets.

"I don't know ... why don't you go inside and ask?" went the reply.

They paled at the prospect and returned to their examination....

We got inside," said the Old Man, "and we would not have otherwise. That's a matter of progress, isn't it?"

An officer, who had been put in charge of the spies, appeared at the cage. He studied the agents as reports passed back and forth behind. He asked, with a scowl, "how did an old man like you get mixed up with a pair like that?"

The Old Man stood and tightened his cloak about his chest. Then, with a tone that bespoke a life of experience, replied: "the history of a man is like the descent of the human alimentary canal. At its start - the lips and their promises of a full, ideal life. At its end - the bowels and their excretions of the lowest, emptiest indignity."

Zei was perplexed while June broke into laughter. The Commander simply pondered the Old Man a moment then again eyed those cohorts. The stoic if detached professor. The femme-fatale mercenary.

"You play Paisho, old man?" he asked, while passing a tile through the cage - a white lotus tile....

"I do not part with that tile ... there are too, too few left who value its importance ... it would be an honor to play it again."

The Commander bowed - and barked an order at the soldiers to be careful with their sacks.

Zei brought the group together into a huddle after the guards left the prison.

"They believe we are trapped," he said with a thumb at the Old Man, "we need to use that advantage of their ignorance. I propose a plan...."

"Sure," she quipped: "it can only be better than your last plan."

Undaunted, he continued: "We wait until night." He gestured at the window and explained, "I used my experience with ancient Earth Kingdom settlements to work out the floor-plan, er, the city-plan of Omashu. It's carved into tiers not unlike Ba Sing Se. The university and its library should be nearest the royalty. We need to bend out of the prison. Then we need to stay low and quiet. Then we need to blend into the city...."

"Yeah, er, that whole 'blend into the city' idea will not be easy to do ... I say we ought to keep out of sight instead." She noticed and swiped a strand of hair off of Zei's shoulder. "I recall where the library is stored, more or less, and assuming they did not move it ... it should not be too hard to find."

"What about the catacombs?" the Old Man asked.

"They would be a safe hideout," she said - then added: "they are patrolled." 

"What about transport?" he continued. "Now that they took our ostrich-horses."

"I guess the professor isn't finished with that theory...."

A blob of shadow and darkness materialized - its outline fell onto their faces. They turned to gape at that heap of something that blocked the light. There had been no sound of any kind to warn them of its intrusion. It simply appeared as if it had been there, always, a prisoner of the cage right along with them. Indeed, they panicked as they wondered how long it had been there ... eavesdropping.

"I couldn't help but listen - are you concocting a plan to escape? How adventurous!" exclaimed a wizened though senile voice. "Can I join? Oh, please, please let me join - you don't want to know how long I have been here...."

"Ummm, we got the role of crazy old man covered, stranger."

"June," said Zei.

The interloper, cloaked by violet, came into their midst - face to face - eyeball to eyeball.... They were amazed (and shocked) at how close he had been to them all the while without their notice. Zei staggered with his hands against his hat. June reached to her whip, of course, it was not there. 

"Are you looking for this?" The strange flung the whip at the woman who caught it reflexively. The figure - whose assault into their circle was not finished - stepped into a slant of light that shone through a window. With that an image came into focus - a face with an eye as crazed as its words suggested. Hunched with a heavy limp gait. Ancient beyond belief yet able to dominate all of them put together. "You should be more careful with your toys, young woman, old men may be wont to play with them."

She wrapped her whip and attached it to her belt.

"What about that game of Paisho? Do I need to crawl through my prison just to find somebody to play? I have been waiting all day and if you won't let me escape then it seems to be a fair trade indeed to give me a round of Paisho. 

June struggled to stifle a laugh.

Zei did not know what to make of that afternoon's turn of events....

A table grew out of the ground along with a couple of stools. The two old men sat at either end of the table - which proved to be the imitation of a gameboard. The tiles were mixed then divided evenly. The white lotus figure was placed at the center of the gameboard. With a rulebook that baffled the youngsters, the ancients took and placed tiles, randomly, from their piles onto the field of play. They formed a pattern, radiating out of its center, mimicking the shape of the white lotus tile itself. 

"Hmmm," the very old man nodded at the not very old man - who was still an old man anyway. "Indeed." He leaned onto and across the table. "If you vouch for that curiously matched pair then they will be granted access to the library. Otherwise, they'll be sent into the emotionally and hormonally challenged teenage chamber where one of them will learn a lesson."

"I do vouch for them, your highness," bowed the Old Man.

Bumi looked sad and resigned. "As you like it, I guess...."

* * *

The Old Man and the Commander - and a few archivists - played at Paisho while June and Zei scoured the inside of a trunk. 

They rummaged through work that represented the output of a dozen forgotten investigations conducted by Karasuki. Yellowed. Handwritten. The documentation was a chore to sift ... and an overload of information to boot. It was a labor to assimilate its data just to find that set which would have led them onto the graveyard. It was a task worsened by the fact that the official journal summaries did not say anything about a graveyard, mythical or factual. Indeed, more and more it seemed to be the case that the record was stilted as if to occult an activity....

As their investigation dragged they realized how the graveyard had been relegated to be an aside of a venture to survey the country. Yet they clung onto the belief that the truth could be unraveled. Enough of it remained that an eye, adept of the conspiracy and its method, would have been able to spot and follow the clue to the destination. It was a cipher and if anything it did not destroy only hide information away from the uninitiated.

It was the script, though, that proved as impenetrable as the conspiracy. Could it have been a tool to assist its deflection? While a perfect example of letter, it was written tiny to conserve their paper. Zei's eyes were left strained, red and wet. June was stronger than the handwriting.

"... what a treat to watch you ... research," he said - she shook with a flair of annoyance and continued with the work. They flattened a map to sift its clues. "Are you certain it was called the graveyard? What could have been the significance of its name?"

She explained that 'graveyard' came out of a myth. Everything about the cataclysm recalled by its survivors was turned into a legend. Further, that a common feature of myth was that it preserved a sort of communal memory of truth. A person. An event. A fact. The survivors were not always literate - the tools to read and write were not always available - and to cope with that deficit they created a strong oral tradition to pass information from generation to generation. That tradition produced a lore common to all of the nations nowadays mostly as songs that mixed elements of fact and fiction.

"If you knew where and how to look ... history could be recreated everywhere out of strange, bizarre accounts."

It was not that their ancestors lacked imagination - to the contrary - it was that they prioritized. They saved up and passed down, through generations like heredity, just that information required to sustain their way of life. Information like how to hunt, plant, harvest, and maintain a well ordered and balanced society. To help 'encode' that information, and ensure that it remained more or less unchanged, they employed the use of song with their metrics. Essentially, the melodies and the rhythms were an aid to jog memory. The effect was not unlike musicians who, after a long while of study and practice, are able to perform by heart.

Seldom they ventured into fiction except as a tool of dramatization to get a point across.

"Imagine if you needed to explain - through a song - a science like archeology. You'd try all sorts of tactics; at the end, though, you'd make a story about it to explain how it worked. You'd invent plots. You'd personify theories. After a while you'd develop a drama that wasn't a drama if you knew how to interpret its symbols."

"Ah, when you compared myth to what you gained by the Riyu and the Meiguo, you were able to decode history."

"That ... would be a way to say it ... it felt like we were more restoring than decoding secrets."

"Like the notion of the cataclysm - what did you find out about it?"

Zei watched June recline against a wall; he folded that map while she stared out of a window.

"We found the truth at the Northern Air Temple. Grandpa and I found a scroll behind a doorway that had been unmolested a century. Its lock, god, the mechanic took a month to unravel its airbending.... We read the document which reported itself to be a history of the Avatar, starting with the very first Avatar who happened to be the very first airbender. According to it, there was an epoch of antiquity where man grew too large and powerful and their evil threatened to destroy the earth. To restore the balance of the world, spirits gathered into an orb and traversed across the sky. Out of that depth of space they entered the system and started its cataclysm. It detailed changes to comets and other types of objects. It went day by day over events that transpired on the earth. At the end, the earth was decimated, its surface was rearranged ... almost everybody died at the wake of the upheaval. Afterward the spirits created the Avatar to keep man checked."

"Fascinating," he exclaimed, "I cannot say I heard a story like that. We find tales about floods and such ... not about out of this world, cosmic catastrophes. The Avatar kept that knowledge safe.... It begs a slew of questions - why an orb and why a tour through the system? There ought to be a better to teach a lesson...." 

"It was quite a rub, doc, it puzzled everybody," she recalled. "Then the more I studied it, the more I realized it should not be taken too literally. Just like a myth, bits and pieces of it had to be read symbolically, recognized as the work of an Avatar trying to explain the history of the world. A long, long time ago, people witnessed an event that they could not fathom. They were filled with fear and as they told the story again and again it changed into something they could have understood, perhaps, accepted. Ideas of their own time and place were added to help explain what happened. You get the arrogance of man. You get the wrath of spirits. You get a rationalization to explain away the cataclysm. Everybody understood spirits trying to keep guilty men and women contained."

That legend of spirit/orb and man cut to size as it strolled through the sky was an event. A real, actual event. Except that the spirit/orb was an extra system artifact. And that it was not meant to cut. But that was the effect anyway.

Yet - the rest of the story dealt with the effects of that cataclysm and at that juncture it was straightforward, more like a testament than a conjecture. The world was shaken; fire from volcanoes and water from tsunamis ravaged civilization. Land itself flowed like a tide, waxing and waning, destroying entire nations.... 

Only a handful of people survived and they attempted to continue. With the foundation of their civilization obliterated, they could not maintain their way of life, they needed to restart. They went from the height of advancement to the depth of abyss within the span of a generation.

"I realized that we were descendants of survivors of a great and powerful society and all of a sudden a lot of other, little details started to come into focus. We lost the technology not the knowledge. We are aware of facts. We accept it without proof. That could be explained only if it was inherited. Like - how do we know about the system, other stars and other worlds, other galaxies.... We know about atoms and compositions. About weather. About cycles of geology."

"I find the idea of it intoxicating," said the archeologist with that glow of discovery about the eye. "It verges into occultism, nevertheless, I have been thinking about it especially after what happened at Volcania. Indeed, your observation is correct, there are a lot of ideas we accept as true yet lack the ability to prove. I uncovered an ancient Earth Kingdom people who knew, exactly, the size and shape of the earth. They produced maps more detailed and accurate than anything we are able to create today. Maybe they did not draw them? Maybe they copied them? As if they were privy to information too advanced to be of their time and place."

The mercenary nodded and elaborated a point about the curious spurts of advancements that littered history.

Zei took to it like a student at a lecture, hanging on each and every word. He could have listened to June talk about her subject forever. She conveyed such a wit and the way she dropped barbs from time to time about figures like Kiyoshi - who she blamed for Chin and the decay of the government - held his attention like a vise. He could not (and would not) escape and only wished to prolong their conversation. 

He felt it was his turn to apply the thesis about myths to unravel the mystery of the graveyard.

"Let me see if I understand. A graveyard of the gods. Of course, that does not follow - gods do not die.... Gods come from the sky, though, unlike spirits who can be anywhere and anything. Gods always descend from the sky. So - these gods are objects that fell out of the sky."

"I see it," she agreed.

"All sorts of junk falls out of the sky. They aren't called gods. Just meteors. Whatever those objects were they were not meteors. They were special. If they had been objects of worship, they would have been put into a temple. Instead, to be buried at a graveyard, imply that there was something about them that was dangerous. June - of course! - they were artifacts of the pre cataclysm world. They may have been sent into the sky to fight the cause of the cataclysm. Like weapons, advanced and powerful, no wonder the Na'Cui want to find them.... They were sent into the sky- then - when civilization was wiped away, without anybody to control them, they scattered into space and maybe a few fell back onto the earth. Maybe there were enough survivors alive at the right time and place to recognize what they were and know they were dangerous."

"If they were weapons, they would have been fueled by the ore." A realization dawned and an attempt to shake it did not ease the dread. "Those were a very, very powerful weapon - they could have thought them powerful enough to deflect the object. That - is what Kuzon is after ... the ore ... to power their weapons or worse...."

"Worse - like what?" he asked. "What could be better than a planet destroying weapon?"

June shut her eyes and would not reply. Amid the whole of the Na'Cui's arsenal of insanity, there was exactly a single item, only a single item that would have required such a tremendous amount of power.

Zei turned to a stack and thumbed through it - an item caught the eye.

"Look," he pulled a map out of the pile and spread it atop the table. It had been that map after the map the details and such were common. Except that map - there was an 'x' and a name. 'Mei Quan Tai." He tapped the item of concern. "That name does not appear anywhere ... except ... yes, a footnote by Yuki. 'Found the source of anxiety. A door of metal, beyond the chamber was undisturbed, operated without difficulty. Contents showed various states of decay. Express to Karasuki a need to return.'"

"Mei Quan Tai," she repeated, "is not familiar. And the map is vague, doc, it looks to be at a steppe. But it could be anywhere. We need to find the volume that footnote alludes to."

Lightning - and a burst of thunder - shook the city.

The window at the attic of the archive was flashed by a blaze. The table full of material they gathered was rattled by a roar. As the storm raged a couple of volumes, penned by Karasuki, vibrated onto the floor.

"Think we ought to call it a night?" asked the bounty hunter - she shut the window through which poured a gust of rain swept air. 

Both the Old Man and the Commander retired; if the archivists were present, they kept that fact to themselves....

"We're close, so, so, close I taste it already," the professor replied. "We've got to find that book of Yuki's - it's like a map with an 'x'...."

Zei walked through aisles between rows and rows of shelves onto the abyss of the attic. June followed, totting a lamp and a tablet. They filled past stacks of obsolete, archaic items as if traveling into the very reaches of science. They reached a sector about cartography and narrowed their search into a trunk - they got onto the floor and sifted the volumes as though they were gold.

The storm intensified and the window that had been secured roared alive. The lamp quivered at the wind that swept June's hair into Zei's face. He chuckled. She dropped a book to comb it away. He reached to his face to check where a strand of her hair remained. She blurted an apology that he caught a word of as his hand clasped her hand. They let that contact continue, then, retreated. A scroll tumbled and rolled away into the shadow and darkness.... Suddenly she clasped his shoulders and he grasped her waist as their lips met.

As haphazardly as it came to be that moment ended - the intimacy was broken a flavor of awkward was added to their embarrassment.

"I am not used to anybody like you," she said then recalled who and what she was, straightening her posture, her frame gaining a visible dimension of empowerment. "People get a certain impression of me."

Despite the inky realm that engulfed them, somehow he reached her hand, somehow she did not reject the gesture.

"You're an incredible woman," he said.

The light was extinguished by the next eruption of air.

June sighed and looked away.

Zei reached into his sack and retrieved the light-cylinder.

"Careful with that flashlight," she warned but did not protest, rather, she used its illumination to scan the end of the trunk. "Brilliant!"

"Yes, quite."

"No, look."

They grabbed the scroll and spread it, explored it atop the floor like they were children.

"Yuki wrote about the technique of cartography," he said, "and left a lot of examples...."

Among which was a map, the size of a fist, full of detail - and buried amid an ocean of facts and figures was the location of Mei Quan Tai given as an aside as though frivolous.

"At last," she said, "it's at the steppe and now we got a location, doc, not too far away."

* * *

Bumi informed the party about a very curious observation. Soldiers at the gate spotted what appeared to be a group - Fire Nation to be certain - although they were not uniformed. The group was caught patrolling the ridge overlooking the city. There were not enough of the enemy to warrant a fight. Anyway, they vanished after they had been seen.

The Old Man asked if there had been a description of the group. The monarch, though, was vague - about rough, bald men. They did not say it aloud, however, they knew that group was Kuzon and his agents. To show at Omashu, the last, extant location with information they required ... even without the description it was too great a coincidence to be anything beyond the obvious. Especially as it lacked any kind of sense that a troop of Fire Nation men would be at Omashu with their army stationed at the other side of the continent.

The day came when they needed to go. The ruler permitted them a passage through the catacomb toward the rear of the city - there they would be able to leave unseen. A day's ride and they would be at a well-traveled road. Afterward it would be the map they smuggled that took them to their destination.

They rode saddled atop ostrich-horse through the cave. The site drew more than a few 'incredible's and 'facinating's out of the professor while the bounty hunter uttered a 'meh' every now and then. The catacomb was extensive and just when they thought its vista of sparkling, glowing rock would not end, they caught a glimpse at the distance of a tall, narrow crack - and the daylight oozing through it.

The crack was parted enough to allow their passage....

Free of the cave and of the city they were confronted by a vista that defied their concept of wasteland. At the edge of a cliff they stood and wondered what to do about that nightmare.... Even their animals were not too eager to traverse it.

The territory - as far and wide as sight extended - sprawled, enshadowed, like an icy, bleak desert. Its hills like dunes were made of rubble not sand. Its valleys were tracts of jagged, deep scars. Beyond that was a flat stretch of earth littered by debris dropped by weather. Beyond that was a jumble that suggested a range. Everywhere its features embodied what a catastrophe should have looked like.

A trail was visible as a wavering, meandering path etched into the gravel. They followed its course northward, swinging east and west, as they traveled. Afterward they entered the depression of what used to be a stream and kept steady. 

Smoothly. Gradually. Without their notice initially. The horizon yielded a sprinkle of green amid an eternity of rock. Soon the alkaline odor of water followed - it was a spring that gargled out of the earth - and they stopped to wet their mouths. The trail lurched upward and upward - then - its tract was erased at the crest of a hill where it was replaced by a road. 

At last what had been a nightmare was transformed through Nature into the steppe.

They reached the ancient cabbage road. Once upon a time trade flourished between Ba Sing Se and the rest of the Earth Kingdom through that trail. Now with the war and its disruption of the continent that commerce ended. Yet it did not go abandoned as refugees replaced merchants. 

"You ought to put your skill to use," Zei said at the front of the saddle. "Maybe not at a university. The field? The country? It's so ... liberating ... invigorating ... no?"

They looked around them at the splendor of the steppe and the neglected battered roar which urged a few 'curses' out of their ostrich-horses.

"Er, thanks no thanks, doc," June said at the back of the saddle. "I prefer to keep the past dead and buried. Anyway, the only people who would be interested by my skill and the very people who want to destroy the world."

They bantered like that as they took a turn at the reign. Zei lamented her rejection of archeology. June chided his thoughtless, reckless urge to dig. Bizarre, as it appeared to be, that dance was how they coped with the embarrassment of the library, it took an edge off of the shyness that kept expressing itself along the road. Strange, as it was, that they always chose to share a saddle.

The Old Man noticed and wondered ... and sympathized. He told a tale to soothe their plight. Instead, it only served to heighten their awkwardness.

At the third day of their trek the left a town and traveled north along the course of a stream indicated by Yuki's map. There remained a trail through the forest although at spots every so often was erased by Nature. Enough of the gravel remained to suggest which way to go.

Through a forest at the edge of the stream that trail narrowed. Vegetation grew into it and they were forced to continue as a file. At that juncture they could not be certain if they were followed. June and Zei were alert; the Old Man would have been surprised if they were not tracked by the Na'Cui - they were just too obsessed.

The forest ended. The plain began. At the boundary between them they stopped to contemplate the vista. The steppe sprawled in front of their eyes from horizon to horizon. It texture varied as shades of green with touches of yellow, orange, red.... Tracks were carved into the earth. Canals were filled with water. It was a tell-tale signal of agriculture.

They were at the limits of a civilization - at that juncture Yuki's map suggested landmarks to pinpoint the location of the graveyard and so they carried onward....

A mount stood away from the farmland. It wanted to appear natural - an effort that was betrayed by its own perfect symmetry. Isolated, it arose atop a plain, whose uniformity further emphasized how artificial that structure had to be.

The sky added a unique pallet of misty, dreamy orange to the environment that heightened its mystery.

A range at the distance crowned that landscape. Mountains, ethereal through that air, were shades of rough, pink granite with the luster of rocksalt. Their facades (that could be seen) were perfectly sloped, chiseled - and loomed like it was both near and far, an effect perpetrated by their size and shape.

As they approached the mount they noted the 'flaw' of its design. At the summit was a structure composed of rock that looked as if it collapsed. A triad of stone rough, jagged and pink like the range were embedded into the earth. The first and the second monoliths formed a v-shaped camber while the third monolith formed the roof. 

The Old Man clutched his chest.

June and Zei stopped.

She asked: "What is it?"

"It's very, very strange - this - feeling. I've known how to sense a rock through the vibrations it yields a bender. This! It feels like a fire that wants to be freed...."

He said: "It must be the ore ... they spoke of the anxiety it caused."

They slipped off of their ostrich-horses.

"There must be an ocean of that stuff inside of that hill - if I feel it like this...."

"Can it be destroyed?" she asked.

The Old Man shook.

"Can it be buried?" he asked.

"Sink it, maybe, I need to get inside to know. It's a reservoir of energy ready to burst as it is. If we try to mess with it too much, kids, we will not survive."

June and Zei looked at each other nervously then at the mount....


	5. Chapter 5

Originally Published April 1, 2011

* * *

The Old Man's discomfort increased and its cause became more and more distinct as they climbed the mount. The 'kids' felt uneasy about dragging the Old Man into it but he insisted, as he was the resident earthbender of the party. He alone was qualified to do what had to be done. Which was - they could not yet surmise. June said (and Zei agreed) that they needed to see the inside of the 'graveyard' to determine the next development.

The formation at the top of the mount appeared invented to hide a secret. Indeed, an examination revealed a hatchway. The monoliths were not easy to budge - perhaps, in the era prior to bending, their displacement would have been impossible without technology. Even then and there, with bending, the Old Man was able to pry them just enough to slither through and reach the alcove below. The light-cylinder/flashlight was aimed through the passage - it revealed steps etched into the bulk of the hill leading into its interior. There did not appear to be cave-in and not a trace of damage could be spotted at that vantage.

They descended. June was first. Zei was second. The Old Man employed a creative use of bending, taught by Bumi, to slip into the void.

Several dozen steps into the bowels of the mount, the passage emptied into a cavern of large rectangular proportions. Within it were signs of structural damage as well as occupancy - wolfbats! The smell of waste was intense ... the mounds of droppings and the ecosystems they supported was no doubt the cause of the decay they observed here and there. Scrambling for a breath of 'fresh' air, they fled and, somehow, someway, found themselves at an archway at the other end of the cavern.

Afterward their trek involved a steady, non-stop descent. They traversed tight winded stairwells and intermittent corridors. A mental picture of their progress revealed that they were sinking, falling into depths under the ground the mound sat atop just as they were sweeping the perimeter of the complex. Stairwells turned them rightward onto passages. Passages turned them rightward onto stairwells. Thus every four alternations produced a complete circuit and each and every time the passages lengthened and widened. 

As they plummeted they realized portions of that complex were untouched by man and unmolested by Nature for tens if not hundreds of thousands of years.

Given their rush and their lack of torchlight - as there was not enough oxygen to support a fire - only gradually they noticed a change took effect within the passages about them. The austere and functional character of the tunnels above, below gained a new and different character. They found brick and mortar walls of intricate patterns (as opposed to bare raw stone) and vaulted ceilings (instead of slab). They discovered murals that expressed through tile a kind of warning complete with images of monstrosities and various other disturbing depictions of sufferings. They were within a pyramid whose designers were trying to convey a message intended to endure despite barriers of language.

At the end of the tunnel was a chamber short and round. They stood within it, facing a heavy, metal hatch. There was not another trace of detail and there was no where to go. A brief moment of panic followed as they wondered just what to do. The Old Man, who described the ore as like standing at a precipice, felt about the doorway, knocking and sensing its vibrations ... he gave a thumbs-up and the youngsters backed away. The part of the wall next to the hatch split apart from top to bottom - the creation of that portal stirred a fog of dust - with a gesture the earthbender caused the dirt to fall.

June staggered through the rent into the chamber at the other side. Zei followed with the light-cylinder. The Old Man closed the orifice behind. June followed the length of the wall and with the aid of Zei explored the area around the doorway. She was determined to find something - she did not announce what it was - then with an exclamation located what they saw was a switch. She flipped it eliciting a spark.

"Only one way to know if it works," she explained - as the switch continued to spark.

Echoing out of that abyss of shadow and darkness, breaking the silence that cloaked the graveyard, was a hum. The tomb - as such it was - vibrated. All around them came the rattle of a million little pieces, resonating, cascading as if a howl of out of the depths of the earth itself.

Zei looked about nervously, the flashlight revealing tantalizing glimpses of the interior. Then it happened - one by one - fixtures hanging off of the ceiling started to glow. A dull, grayish light. A blatantly artificial light that gradually intensified to the level of a lamp. A few of them flickered and sparked like the switched; another was lifeless; another exploded out of the fixture and shattered on the floor.

The glow revealed a low, wide subterranean chamber supported by columns at regular, grid-like intervals. The ceiling was covered with pipes and wires. The floor was a shiny ebony tile. The walls, were they could be seen, matched the icy cold masonry of the floor. 

They approached the interior of the chamber, their steps issuing a low yet rich timbre as they fanned about the tables.

Tables - framed by metal and fitted with wheels - were arranged like the headstones of graveyards ... and upon them were monstrosities covered only with a tarp.

"The gods," the Old Man said of the remains - the fragments of which could be seen through the tarp....

They were crumpled, shattered, burnt - their parts here and there were often reassembled, crudely, as though to demonstrated their form prior to their destruction ... like the shards of vases tacked together by pins.

Zei picked an aisle whose artifacts were more often larger than smaller. He examined the specimens and noted the geometries of their bodies. Attached at their sides were large circular dishes at various states of completeness which accounted for the bulk of their volumes. Every so often there were shreds of foil like gold. All of the specimens bore either the Riyu or the Meiguo.

"People sent these objects into space ... yet ... they cannot be weapons, too small, too fragile, this cannot be the stuff that destroys a world," he stated. "What did they do?"

June shook.

The Old Man turned to a specimen whose shaped differed. It was a cone. Burnt at its tip. Exposed at its base. Wires of various lengths and colors - and other implements he could not identify - jutted out of the rent at the base where it had been torn off of a large structure. Zei and June watched him reach into its interior and jostle about its contents. He freed a canister - yellow and very, very heavy despite its size - it slipped and fell onto the floor, where it left a mark. As it rolled they saw a pair of symbols - a circle with three symmetrically-spaced sectors and a skull and bones.

"Amazing," he said of it, "the symbols so perfect that they transcend time and place. The ore is inside of it - I feel it - it's almost - almost - almost alive...." He clutched at his jacket, at his chest. "All of them have it to various degrees - that - was the worst so far."

"There must be a hundred of these artifacts," she said, looking about the chamber. "There could be a ton of that junk just here...."

They left the canister and retreated toward the rear of the chamber - there they faced a row of doorways.

They were built of that heavy metal quality. They were not locked, although, they were not easy to turn on their hinges. Most of them led into smaller and emptier chambers. Others into chambers jammed with equipment. Arrays of boxes whose faces leaked glasses that through the eons flowed like water. Everything was covered by knobs and dials and panels with Meiguo-adorned, functional buttons that lighted when touched. Scrolls littered the floor as if the last to occupy were at such a rush to leave that they dropped their supplies where they stood. The paper itself contained only the numbers, rows and columns of it, and proved as indescribable as anything.

Another hatchway emptied into a stairwell illuminated with a light even softer and duller than what they saw already. They followed the pathway as it led into a warehouse yet further submerged into the earth. The relics were not space faring gods, rather, items of intact ancient technologies. The bulk of the collection felt to the Old Man just like that cone and he warned them not to touch anything emboldened with that skull and bones symbol.

"They took everything they knew was dangerous ... and buried it here, here like a tomb dedicated to another age," the Old Man said. "And those murals - this place is a warning - there's something about the very deep and ancient past that was not to be repeated...."

Zei nodded - all of a sudden the thrill of archeology fled like the color off of his face. 

June mused about a table full of long red sticks. Wires came out of their ends and made them look like candles. The Meiguo at the sides were just three symbols bold and unmistakable after years of study. 

"We'll blow it up," she announced, grabbing a fist full of sticks. "This is what they called dynamite. An explosive more powerful than powder and less dangerous than ore. They used it to level mountains. We'll use it to bury this crypt forever."

"Can it be?" He looked at a stick, rubbing the tip of its wire. "How do we escape?"

The Old Man walked up to a wall and with the power caused the earth behind it to punch through the material of its concrete. It was not delicate but a breach was formed and the earth behind was revealed. Then he stuck his hands into the soil and felt about.

"We're not that deep underground," he explained, "A tunnel to the surface will be enough."

* * *

"The equipment is too advanced," said the Old Man. "But it is conceivable that bits and pieces of the knowledge needed to make it were fed to people. To give them a taste of what's to come. To point them into the proper direction ... to make it themselves. And it could be that these interventions were responsible for the advancement that always came at the start of war. Like Chin, who was said to use canons able to strike at thousand miles away. Then, of course, the way the Fire Nation learned to exploit steam."

"Are their fingerprints all over history? Identifying those willing and able to enact their vision of the world? Indeed, just dropping enough technology here and there to give their puppets the edge but not enough to fear their rebellion ... should it come to that later. We have been their pawns for ages ... beyond ages," Zei concluded. "Unknown forces from another time and place. Just how do they intervene?"

June looked at a pile of sticks. Unattended. They would be so useful, she thought, and when nobody was looking she stuffed a few into her sack. Maybe the dynamite was not as sophisticated as their wunderweapon, she reasoned, if they were going to meet, man to man, they should be prepared.

The Na'Cui lived among them within their world as if a natural part of it. They, directly and indirectly, slithered into its centers of powers across all of its nations. Essentially ... they colonized from within to without ... they exploited a power they gained at the past to manipulate and enact their agenda. A kind of renaissance inspired Chin with the notion that his tribe was destined to conquer the world. The Fire Nation entered into an epoch of rebirth, too, and concluded that their people were destined to rule the world.

If the Na'Cui infiltrated the Fire Nation at that epoch ... maybe they sparked the interest, maybe they used a movement to stir that people either way ... they began a program to excavate the countryside simply to locate the storehouses. They started with a few tiny moves toward a direction of advancement instead of the full blown fury that undid Chin. They planted ideas about superiority and let nature lead to authentic Fire Nation advancement ... to make technology of their own and absorb it and spread it until it became a daily part of life. Thus to serve as reinforcement that they were special. 

Destined. 

Chosen....

The aim of the Na'Cui was to lead the chosen into a path where their own desire - albeit with plenty of poking and prodding along the way - impelled them to conquer the world. That would have set the stage for the Na'Cui's own rebirth out of the ash of history. The only part of that plan they could not control - someway, somehow did not foresee even with Chin - was the Avatar. Chin was felled by the Avatar and so it was up to Sozin to wipe the airnomads and to kill the Avatar. With a plot close to fruition, the drive to unleash more and more power was paramount.

Yet ... how did they not know about the Avatar?

How much those true believers knew of their own history or affairs she could not say. Except that there had to be a method, a central, regulating mind, that pulled the strings of their operations.

The three congregated at the warehouse of the space-gods.

The Old Man was pallid and weakened - it seemed that their plot to demolish the crypt needed to be modified - or - abandoned.

"How about a booby trap?" Zei suggested. "Pyramids and tombs are full of traps. It could be rigged with the dynamite."

"It ignited with a spark," June explained. "A spring loaded flint? I donno, doc, I tend to be at the working-end of a trap and not at...."

The Old Man raised an arm and the two became silent. He pointed to the entrance and they got to their feet. A rumble echoed out of that area - it got louder and louder as an object of quite a lot of heft tumbled through the tunnel behind the hatchway.

Frantic, they grabbed at tables, wheeling them and their contents in front of the entrance - it provided the only logical if flimsy barrier.

When object met target, their collision unleashed, reverberated, the force of it shook the graveyard. That assault was a prelude to tenderize the area. The intended strike followed and when it came it was like an explosion.

"Fen!" Zei shouted, recognizing a ray-like stream of fire. "We need to get away."

Fen struck at the doorway and at the barrier. The ogre was brutal yet accurate with his attack. They knew the sensitivity of the technology and the danger of the ore if it escaped its clad. The brute fired with careful if lethal precision careful to avoid hitting the artifacts.

When enough of that doorway was breached, a hand with a light-cylinder emerged through the tear. Its beam was thin and focused. Its light swept at the areas about the tables that served as a barrier. The hand withdrew a later an orb-like clump of metal was flung into the warehouse.

"Run!" she shouted and yanked the men away.

They grabbed onto the nearest table, flipping and condemning its artifacts to a shattered death against the floor. They huddled as the object flung into the chamber exploded. Everything that was not bolted got shifted by the blast. Bits of knurled, burnt metal were swept into the air and stabbed at what it rained upon like knives. The lights around the burst failed and the chamber, which had been unnaturally free of dust, filled with a spreading, foggy smoke.

They heard a grumble of voices come out of that point of entry - it was clear that beyond Fen there were more, much more men waiting to pounce into the warehouse.

"We need to go downstairs," June said to Zei, grabbing the man at the collar.

He fell away and it was at that juncture that she noticed the shoulder - where the jacket was torn, bloody.

Zei staggered against the frame of a table and settled with a pose inspired by pain. He struggled to breathe as the dust cleared. It was shock and while it passed the pain did not vanish. 

"Take my sack," he said, struggling to raise the item. "Don't let them find it...."

June grasped the other, good shoulder, trying not to see, not to acknowledge the injury even as her eyes were ready to burst.

"Take my sack, and, go ... the Old Man knows the way...."

"They're breaking into the chamber," the Old Man said, yanking at the woman's arm.

"Hey, you said it ... I'd end it at a hole, to be together with history," he added with a laugh.

"Bastard," she growled, leaning into his fact, onto his cheek.

"They can be stopped," he said, "follow them ... bounty-hunter...."

The Old Man dragged June away as the first of Kuzon's men rushed into the warehouse - he gestured at the floor, massaging and loosening it stone enough that they sunk through.

With that Zei was alone....

He sat determined not to meet with death like a victim despite that pain and everything. He pressed his back against the remnant of the god - a part of which was embedded into his shoulder. He leaned his side onto the table and used it a crutch to stand - all the while oblivious to the shouts, the footsteps, the advances.

Somebody tread through the rubble with a gait that commanded authority....

Zei gazed up as the silhouette came down.

Kuzon waited, bouncing from hand to hand as if it were a toy that canister the Old Man dropped.

"Once again, professor, what was yours is now mine." he smiled and flung the canister.

Fen - who expressed a smirk - caught it and the sight of the archeologist.

"That bounty-hunter and earthbender must be nearby," said Xi.

"True," Kuzon concluded, looking somewhat amused. "They don't matter - we have the fuel - and there will be nobody to stop us."

"Shall we kill him?"

Kuzon contemplated the archeologist, rubbing the right side of his goatee.

"Not yet," he answered, "with Karasuki uncooperative ... we may still need the professor."

* * *

June and the Old Man emerged east of the mount. 

It was night; the moon and the stars were all that illuminated the area. 

She studied the situation behind the safety of boulders. Up, at the top of the mount, a light bled through its monoliths and revealed a contingent of men. Kuzon's agents occupied themselves with the hatchway, expanding and clearing its view of the interior. Down, at the base of the hill, rested an armada of vehicles still venting, steaming. The encampment was completed by a pen of rhinohorses and ostrich-horses - their own, though, were not to be found.

The situation was just something that did not sit well with June. She had been extremely careful (and mindful) about their exit from Omashu. She used all of the tricks of her craft to mask their movement. Still - the Na'Cui found them anyway and without difficulty - the tracker tracked.... She was irate and vowed to get to the bottom of it - else - realistically there could be no escape.

While the men at the mount were occupied with their task, she noticed motion out of the vicinity of their transport.

The Old Man sunk into the ground as he watched June slither toward the area of that motion. He kept his eyes moving between the woman and the men, working out a way to stop them if they sounded an alarm. If there was anything good to be said it was that the agents were too focused with their task to notice the breach into their encampment. So confident they were in their superior position and everything....

June passed the animals along the journey toward the vehicles. The beasts stirred they chains a little at her presence otherwise they did not make a sound. She continued further and further onward. She reached the iron and steam behemoth where she discovered a shirshu - the creature wore a saddle and was leashed by a chain.

The shirshu rose to its feet yet did not cause a fuss - rather, it sniffed her face, then curled onto the ground.

"So ... a shirshu ... that's how you found us," she mused aloud. She heard of it though never actually saw a specimen. The shirshu was a rare, almost-mythical beast, renown for its ability to track a scent. It displayed a gentle, dog-like temperament except if provoked then it used its tongue to paralyze its tormentor. Of course, she thought, the best part of the find was that the creature had been trained to accept a rider.

She followed the chain - the shirshu allowed the work without difficulty. She located the chain's tight clasp at the collar. It was immense and rigid - no doubt designed to be used by those Na'Cui supermen - yet with a hand she unlatched the chain. Freed, the creature showed an extraordinary gentle manner - it shook its head and stretched its body, yawning like a cat, then stood beside the woman as if offering its saddle for a ride.

June took a breath - action had to be quick - distracted, as the agents were at the crypt, they would have noticed the shirshu jumping through their encampment and their cover would be blown. She mounted the saddle and took the reigns. She pulled on the tether and noted the way the beast replied. Confident that she under its principle, she aimed at the rocks and indicated to speed. 

A shout came out of the hill, its accent, its verbiage unknown. 

The Old Man jumped onto his feet suddenly as she reached and grabbed his arm and flung him onto the saddle, then, together they raced toward the mountains.

They rode until daybreak - with the mountains westward and the sun eastward.

"What will you do?" he asked.

"I got the shirshu," she replied, patting the creature. "I'll track Zei and Kuzon."

The Old Man nodded and added: "Just as well ... I'm getting too rusty for this...."

They raced toward the mouth of the divide.

The earthbender talked of a town by the canyon and claimed that the travel was not yet ended. She did not ask. He did not tell. A chaste kiss to the cheek was goodbye enough and that was that.

Atop the shirshu she watched that ancient, old man strut up the road, stretch his arms wide outward toward the canyon.... A breeze swept the dirt into her eyes - she turned and blinked. At that moment, that instant she was distracted ... he vanished.

"You crazy, old man," she mused as the wind returned - only it was a cold, brisk zephyr wholly out of season. Its interruption brought a feeling into focus all of a sudden.... It was a sense of alone. The bleakness of alone. It came with the awareness of what the entanglement with the Na'Cui culminated to. They always haunted her family, their specter loomed over every thing they did, every action they took. They destroyed their family and, now, Zei? 

* * *

Kuzon did not consider their escape a problem. She could not say if the madman believed that Zei a greater threat than June -or - that their victory was assured enough that nobody save the Avatar could have stopped the Na'Cui. She was thankful, though, of the advantage such arrogance continued to afford.

Aided by Nyla, June tracked the Na'Cui as they progressed from the graveyard to the south, through the course of a week.... They stopped at the City of Chin. A port apt to them and their image as it was the spot where the figure died and which remained unfriendly to the Avatar. 

She hid about the outskirt of the city, at the wilderness, cloaked to study that group and its habit. She spied Zei, who still looked weak and injured ... a sigh of relief came. Immediately she thought about how to strike against them there where they settled by their ship at a wharf.

It was not enough just to rescue the archeologist. They needed to put a stop to the unstoppable - that unnamable, older evil and its plot to dominate the world. It meant locating and destroying their center of operation. With the shirshu and patience over expedience it was a goal that seemed to be possible.

At the end of yet another day at port - and without any kind of progress to show - she resolved a last ditch plot. She aimed to sink their ship with the dynamite. That would have sent the ore into the depth of the ocean. 

As night triumphed day, June and Nyla dipped into the water, unnoticed. Under a cloak provided by midnight, they approached the vessel, undetected. Everything had been loaded into it ... including the prisoner. It was simply a matter of locating the man and planting the dynamite. Their advance was going to plan until they contacted the stern and the engine came to life.

Panicked, the creature jumped onto the hull, digging its claws into its metal. Thankfully, the operation of the engine was loud.... It masked the beast's tenuous, jittery climb up the side of the vessel.

The ship was scarred and showed a sign of bombardment. At its stern especially its hull was crumpled. That flaw aided the woman and the shirshu. At the hatch of the hold, which had been dented as if by rock, the defect proved wide enough to allow a little access. June was amazed as Nyla used its leverage to carve a wider point of entry. The crack was torn as though it were foil. 

They peaked - the hold was a void filled by cargo. Its size was vast, vast enough to hide them if they were careful. Such as it was, a relative island of safety, they stowed away into the recess of the ship.

They fled the area of the hatch as a guard came into the hold.

The soldier patrolled by the hatch and saw it but did not think it strange enough to warrant an alarm. Could it be that the damage they caused was not beyond what it already suffered? Clearly, he did not imagine it was a sign the ship had been breached. 

He checked the cargo then retreated, extinguishing a lamp along the way.

June crawled out of a crate that escaped inspection. Leaving Nyla to sleep, curled within that box, she lurked through the hold with the aid of Zei's light-cylinder. She took note of the cargo - it was just her luck, she cursed, that the stuff was full of food and supply. The ore was not to be found. She imagined that Kuzon kept that treasure much, much closer.

The ship vibrated as it sped. The shirshu was jarred. The woman anxious. They could be noticed ... yet, after a while, the drone of the engine faded as background. Indeed, the hum it became appeared to lull the creature.

The vessel progressed southward toward its destination. The clime was colder, its days shorter, its nights longer. The effect was profound to the shirshu. Nyla began to eat and drink less and less, then, eventually, she curled into a ball as if to hibernate.

June took advantage of that effect. She explored beyond the hold without fear the creature would have gotten into trouble. Quiet. Cautions. She ventured only at night to penetrate the engine below and the deck above. Amid shadow and darkness she observed the operations day to day.

Aboard, the ship worked like a clock, with the discipline of a military.

It was a week into the voyage that a change occurred.... 

June noticed it as they dodged the ice of the antarctic. The sky was gray. The air was frigid. She peered through a hatch at the deck and gazed at those agents. Gone was the pretence that they were Fire Nation. They saluted each other, mechanically, exchanging words of a rough, guttural language. Kuzon himself wore an ill-fitting military uniform. Black from head to toe. The underlings, including Fen and Xi, wore an outfit like the type Zei described at Volcania. They, too, included the armband - it was the only splash of color.

The standard Fire Nation flag was replaced by another symbol she knew all too well. A red field. A white circle. A black crooked, bent cross. It was the emblem of the Na'Cui. 

Their truth revealed chilled her worse than the weather....

The engine was killed at that last day of voyage. The ship coasted, though, carried by momentum through a shelf. Everything rattled as they collided against burgs. The commotion was so intense that it brought the shirshu out of its slumber. Then, with a sound that suggested metal-grinding-ice, the vessel rested at the continent.

June smashed a crate and set it ablaze - the fire warmed Nyla and that activity reversed the effect of its hibernation. A bite of meat and they were ready to escape. June mounted Nyla and they slithered out of the crack at the hatch onto the shelf. They fled across the field from berg to berg toward a wall of rock that encompassed the edge of that would-be cove. They scaled the fact of that cliff and kept at its rim - away and masked by stone they watched the vessel.

It was apparent that they did not come to rest at the continent, rather, they reached a tiny volcanic island off of its coast....

The island was dominated by its volcano which was warm enough to melt the ice and expose the rock about its vicinity. On the ice there was very little cover. On the mountain, though, it was possible to blend and hide at the distance. The rest of the island was flat - elevated a hundred feet off of the ocean - with a single visible 'ramp', carved out of ice and rock like a pass, which began at the foot of the volcano and swerved and emptied at the cove.

A train of men emerged out of the ship. Fen and Xi were the front. Kuzon with Zei were at the back. At the middle was a team that dragged the crate filled with the ore. They trekked across that ramp toward the slope of the volcano where smoke bellowed out of the earth. As they walked, little by little, the mountain arose out of the horizon. They scaled the length of the ramp and it loomed as large, as real as anything. They lurched toward its base and another kind of sight emerged through the haze. 

It baffled Zei and Kuzon noted the effect with glee as if expecting the reaction.

What came out of that slope was a structure so integrated into the side of the mountain that only face to face could it be discerned at all. The bulk of it, like the whole of the island, appeared to be swept by catastrophe. Segments were broken, were strewn, were jetted out of a cover of lava hardened into stone. Debris had been swept away as if by a flow that also carved the ramp they tread.

What remained of that structure still boggled the mind with a scale that verged into the cyclopean. Walls of four hundred feet. Masonry of tight, interlocking granite. There were no windows, no doorways, no battlements to speak of - at least that survived the cataclysm. It had the flavor of a fortification yet it was not any kind of human architecture....

They neared a wide, thin crack that served as an entrance.

"What is it?" Zei asked, overcome by awe. "Humans could not have...."

"We were directed to the fortress," Kuzon explained. "It was part of the world before man took breath. It will be the center of everything at the wake of this age. Yes, professor, we were given help. From them. From them." He pointed upwards - outward - and it took a shake of the head to register that meaning of that gesture. "We came from them."

Zei looked at the man, nodded, and stepped into the crack.

The fort showed signs of a cyclical, continuous barrage of damage of which the cataclysm was not a singular example. That tragedy that felled the earth changed its topography and could have destroyed the structure. Enough of it remained, though, to inspire awe within a man who discovered a hundred ancient civilizations already....

At the end of the crack they stood within that fortress. 

Enshadowed like interlopers out of time and place. Indeed, so dwarfed by the scale of everything they appeared more as insects than as men. They scurried about as if that disproportion awoke an ancient technique of survival. Even among the Na'Cui, who doubtless came to that refuge every now and then, there was a natural reaction of unease. 

The dread it inspired interfered with their perception, blurring into disarray their impression. Not an inch of the interior was devoid of construction. It was like a conglomeration of structure joined by walkways and other connective inventions that lacked analog with humanity. Buildings themselves alternated from cylindrical to pyramidal. 

The effect of paralysis that vista induced was an inexhaustible source of amusement to Kuzon.

To Zei's dismay and disappointment the Na'Cui did not venture toward the center of the fort - were the structure was dense and could be studied. Rather, they congregated about what he mistook as a vast, onyx pool. It was a shaft into the earth. Its sides rough yet flat. Its shape perfect except at the bottom. At the end flashlight revealed a mound of rubble that collected through the course of eons and eons.... 

Ropes were secured onto the edge then flung into the shaft. A pair of men descended and helped the others lower the crate with the ore. Then one by one everyone scaled the shaft. Kuzon and Zei were the last onto its bottom.

June and Nyla came to the shaft - the shirshu waited while the woman peaked and listened at the edge. 

She caught sight of people dragging their quarry toward an antechamber while Kuzon and Zei watched.

That shaft and antechamber were attached to a hangar. It was an installation that had been ruined by ages of weather and catastrophe long, long before a man set foot into it. At that venture those who built the fort were already dead a million years....

Underground their light revealed a slew of detail that stoked curiosity. Chief among it were remnants of vehicles and such that dwarfed those men who scurried with their ore like insects who crawled with their debris around that equipment. As Kuzon said, again and again, the fortress was not the work of man yet its function was not impossible to read. They were surrounded by instruments of war ... all of which displayed a resemblance to the content of the Fire Nation arsenal. 

Zei nodded, understanding then and there that whatever doubt remained was fled - the information to recreate those wonders had been communicated to man across spans of eons.

"We regrouped at the fortress hundreds of thousands of years ago and plotted another fight for another day. A second chance ... at life, professor," Kuzon explained.

"You were defeated once," Zei quipped. "You will be defeated again and again."

The leader laughed at that statement uttered by a man who knew nothing of the history of their kind.

"Defeat? Fool! You think that war is over?" Kuzon stepped and leaned into Zei. "That war is happening, still, even now - as we speak - even now, bullets are firing, bombs are dropping. All of that is happening. We did not lose. We changed the field of battle, opting to fight at the same place but a different time. A better time, professor, truly ready and worthy of our ascension."

"Ridiculous," Zei stood firm against Kuzon. "What's past is past. What's future is future. They cannot interfere with each other anymore than we can stop the sunset or reach into last week."

"Indeed .... that is exactly what you are meant to believe." He tweaked the right side of his beard then stepped aback. Arms wide, apart as if to signify the vastness not only of their environs but of their plot. "This, the conflict, is beyond ancient. Our struggle began in the stars on other worlds and realms that you cannot fathom. Earth is simply one of infinite battlefields - and, at last, we are poised to win it. You friends who gave you the Avatar failed." 

They stood at a platform. Kuzon and Zei were at the center with the ore. The men were at the perimeter. It was a circle of gray that gathered about the leader and the archeologist. 

With the press of a button - about the size of a head - the platform jostled. With a groan, and a shriek of metal grinding metal, it started to lurch into the abyss of the hangar. Amid that sound nobody noticed ... at the shaft they scaled ... at the rope they used ... how they went slack and fell onto the rubble at the bottom....

Light fixed onto the structure of the hangar flickered until it reached a level not unlike that of the graveyard.

June and Nyla reached the bottom of the shaft, then, the woman approached the antechamber while the creature retreated onto that rubble.

The platform tottered and came to a stop. The men dragged the crate toward the center of a fixture that had been retrofitted into the hangar. It was a ring at the center of which rested an acorn shaped object like a bell. Chains from the ring to the bell kept it levitated a few feet off of the ground.

She gasped - her heart skipped a beat as her mind yelled that it was impossible.

The mercenary inspected the frame that kept the platform. She noticed a shaft that had been formed to allow access via ladder from floor to floor if the elevator failed. She jumped at that ladder - and gestured annoyance. She realized too late that it was not built to fit a human.

An order was given and they tore at the crate. With their own, naked hands they transported the ore into a wide and deep metal basin that had been filled with water.

The professor was not considered to be a threat, at that juncture, and roamed about the facility. Most of it was cloaked by an impenetrable fog of onyx their light could not breach. Their light, where it was aglow here and there, softened the focus of eyes and muffled the shapes of objects. The equipment was fuzzy - not that its function would have been recognizable.

But there was a table within reach....

And nobody objected....

It was covered by a foil that despite its flimsy lack of girth maintained a warmth.

He lifted then yanked it off.

"Egads!" he shouted and stepped, then stumbled, then fell aback, still clutching to the foil as if there a last shred of sanity.

Kuzon laughed at the terror and horror that Zei's face revealed.

Uncovered at that table was a triad of jars. Glass jars. Filled with a flowing, bubbling liquid - and heads! Human to be sure. The first Two showed trauma and he could not identify who they were except they were a man and a woman. The last third....

"Yes," Kuzon explained: "We saved Sozin's head."

Kuzon returned to the matter of the ring and the bell. 

Zei recoiled - onto Fen.

The brute stopped the man with a hand at the shoulder.

The men encircled the archeologist, wearing their uniforms, aiming their weapons. Their gaze which wore an icy, cold stoicism obliterated their humanity. Scanning their faces left to right, Zei was certain that what remained of life consisted of a few breaths and an order to kill. He inhaled then ... then spied a strange length of rope waving and dangling at the wind about the elevator. It had not been there when they used it. 

He exhaled with a grin.

"So ... what's going to happen?"

"You're going to die, professor, as you outlived your usefulness. How you managed to put together so much of the puzzle with your profound lack of knowledge is beyond my understanding and suggests you were just lucky. Well - that luck is about to run its course." Kuzon spun and faced the prisoner, rubbing his clean shaven chin. "However ... before you are dispatched ... I intend to delight myself by demonstrating how wrong you are ... about everything. I tell you we came from the stars and that it is destiny that we rule the universe forever - and you will see it, you will believe it - then - you will die."

"Destined to rule, is it, Kuzon?" Zei mocked. "A degree is not required to understand you. Na'Cui! Invaders. Plunderers. Murderers. It's just a tiny shade of insanity that sets you apart of the other petty criminals. Yes - one day - one day, Kuzon, and I assure you sooner than later - when the last of your ilk is obliterated it will be up to the historian to dissect the corpse of villainy left behind. They'll account all of the deaths, all of the butchery, every last crime against Nature you perpetrated ... and when your sins are splayed for all the world to see and know, the human race will cringe a little more at the shame it needs to bare."

Kuzon gave a signal and Xi turned a key - the light dimmed and the machine hummed. At the ring, immediately, a fluid was pumped through pipes into the bell at the center of the structure. The bell rung then swayed then swirled. The fluid glowed red.... The hum intensified and filled the air like a gale. The bell arose and a pinprick of bright white light emerged out of its underside. It erupted a frozen bolt of lightning. That crazy, zigzag of plasma - like a single bright, thin jagged flame of fire - widened....

Kuzon laughed - the men staggered ... even they were afraid.

The crack in time and place widened. Soon through its gap came a vision - it was a view of the same exact facility - only that version was filled with soldiers. It was a bridge between past and future, a span of hundreds of thousands of years.

And then a sparkling gush of red soared through the air onto the bell. At first the Na'Cui thought it was part of the show. But Zei recognized the stick the light was attached to and hit the floor. Kuzon screamed 'no' - it was too late - the dynamite exploded.

At the wake of the blast - men scattered, equipment flamed - only a single chain connected the bell to the ring, unsecured as it were, it wobbled and bounced about.

Xi scrambled to regain control yet it was impossible as the instruments and the panels and the whatnot, already an ancient work of technology, did not survive the explosion. Fen retreated into the recess of the hanger as panic filled the men. All the while their leader attempted to stop the bell by yanking at the pipe that fed it a glowing red fluid. 

Zei, unnoticed within that commotion, crawled on hands and knees toward the platform where he spotted that rope.

It was at that juncture that another stick was lit and hurtled at the bell - and exploded. 

Little beyond rubble remained of the control. The chain snapped. The bell - tethered only at that pipe which refused to yield - arose higher and higher. The hangar filled with words, a mixture of known and unknown languages, as the scene revealed through the bell's lightning shaped crack expanded and switched randomly from vista to vista. Landscapes, familiar and alien, mixed with expanses of stars and other, incomprehensible views of the universe.

Into that vortex Xi was swept with a scream - the last of him could be seen floating, falling into a violet cloudy void of space.

Kuzon staggered toward that crack as it widened beyond the ring. He brandished a weapon, aimed, fired, shooting at the bell above the light. He screamed as he, too, left that existence to where and when unknown....

"June!" Zei exclaimed.

At that the woman jumped out of a column and clasped onto the man - their lips met only to part.

That window into time and place threatened to consume the hanger, if not the island....

"We got to scram, doc, fast!"

They raced to climb that combination rope/ladder as the vortex expanded, engulfing more and more of the facility. At the edge they were met by the shirshu; she had been spooked by the explosions and commotions. 

Another blast below launched a few items above - one of which was the jar with Sozin's head....

Zei blinked. He could not say, exactly, what prompted the idea. Yet as he looked at the jar he could not help but feel that the expression of the face changed. Could it be the way its eyes were startled and its lips were parted as if it tried to utter a scream? Of course, if there had been an alteration, it would have been due to the explosion that launched it.

"What are you doing?" she asked as he chased the jar.

"I need to save Sozin's head!" he replied. "Nobody's going to believe this...."

"That's the most ridiculous, most insane collection of words anybody uttered!"

June knocked Zei flat - the jar slipped out of his fingers and into the abyss. 

Nyla carried them as she shot through the shaft.

They fled the fortress and followed the ramp. As they reached the cove, the whirlwind of that vortex attained its maximum proportion - a crack the height and width of the volcano. Strangely, it retained that original, jagged shape, as it displayed random portals into random times and places.... 

A cloud the shape of a mushroom exploded out of the fortress ... and with that the vortex was gone.

"Sorry, doc, I knocked you out," she said as he awoke.

"It's, OK, I guess," he said, "they would not believe it anyway."

At the wake of that event the mountain stirred and shook the island. A sheet of ice displaced atop the ship at the cove. The vessel was smashed, crushed. It split apart, bow and stern, and sunk into the water.

* * *

The volcano receded further and further into the horizon as the warriors of the Southern Water Tribe sailed away.

Zei and June, at the rear of the vessel, gazed at the sky. At the moon and the stars.... There used to be a comfort about it. Now it was a view of the universe that experience transformed into a landscape of unnamable and indescribable nightmare. Now, as the vastness of it came into view, there was indeed something new and different about its character. It was always able to put man into his right and proper place. Yet, where before its majesty was simply indifferent to the comings and goings of earthlings, after what they witnessed it was revealed to be the source of a very real, very active menace.

"I want to think we stopped them," Zei said, turning to face the woman.

"I donno ... doc ... they're still plotting, scheming for that right opportunity to strike." June sighed. "They are not dead and the future is not safe from the past."

* * *

A wall of stone exploded and a hand pierced that hole, punching and forcing it wider. Another blast of fire and the rest of the barrier crumbled. Through the smoke emerged a face - its eyes were shut except at the forehead - that eye did not blink.


End file.
